Empowering students is partly about fighting for students' formal rights. But is it also about ensuring that these rights are filled with content and interpreted in the best interest of the students. Some student unions fight for better parental leave arrangements for PhD students. Some fight for their right to say what they think. Others strive to find finances for their organisation's survival from year to year. But surely, they are all working for the students they represent. This handbook aims at showing the diversity of the European student movement by addressing different facets of student representation. Strategically, the main rationale behind publishing this book is that student representatives and unions should be able to learn from each other's good or bad practices, and grow stronger through the sharing of the organisational wisdom that has been accumulated over the years. This handbook aims at providing a set of useful information, shared by student activists and ESU members, but also at putting forward the first mirror of the characteristics and priorities of ESU member unions. Hence, the publication has two main parts. The authors have asked experienced student representatives to reflect on both general and very concrete challenges that student unions face. They have also asked the unions how they organise themselves and what their important issues are. The authors hope that this handbook helps students think about how they can make their own union work better. (Contains 4 footnotes.)