Next up in our Community Change 'Spotlight On' series are our Community Relations Officers, Akifah Mojaddy and Ladan Moalin. They are responsible for representing UCL students in the local community.
Hi Akifah and Ladan ! What have you been up to recently?
One of our aims has been to promote and advertise student-led initiatives at UCL, and to do this we’ve been working closely with the volunteering service. Last week, we joined one of these student-led projects - Suture the Future on one of their school visits and spoke to the project lead – Aysha Adil to find out more!
Tell us about the event.
We went to Central Foundation Girls School where we held the second session of term 2. We taught students in years 9-10 basic life support and how to suture. We also held a question & answer session to allow students to ask any questions regarding applying to medical school, our experiences so far as medical students and university life in general. When we split off into smaller groups for teaching we further encouraged them to ask questions whilst learning skills in a fun, interactive environment.
What's the aim of the project?
Suture the Future is a student led outreach project from RUMS ISOC. The aim is to overcome the difference that exists between under-privileged children and those who have the advantages of having a better education. This project serves this gap by encouraging students who attend comprehensive schools to speak to medical students and learn a new skill set. Through this, we hope to encourage students to raise their ambitions and pursue higher education, particularly health related courses.
Any highlights?
The students really loved spending time with the UCL volunteers and learning to suture. One student, Isha, saying, “We don’t really get these opportunities that often, so we get really excited whenever opportunities like this come up. I’d love to become a university student and hopefully be able to volunteer in awesome projects like Suture the Future!”.
If you would like to know more about Community Change at the Student Union please email [email protected].
