You've probably read stories from our students, raving about how much they love volunteering with our amazing organisations, but have you ever been curious about what the organisations have to say about their UCL volunteers? IntoUniversity, a mentoring charity, wanted to give a shout-out to two of your peers for being stellar volunteers. Read on to find out more!
IntoUniversity is an educational charity that provides local learning centres across London and the UK for young people, aged 7 to 18, who are from disadvantaged backgrounds. Young people come to our centres regularly to receive academic support to ensure they are inspired to achieve and can reach their true potential. An essential part of this support is our University Student Mentoring scheme.
The University Student Mentoring scheme is a chance for university students to be a mentor to young people. University students help our young people to build confidence both academically and socially whilst having fun along the way! Due to the incredible support of university students, our young people have the opportunity to think more about their futures and how they can achieve their goals.
Over 500 UCL students have volunteered with us since IntoUniversity was founded and we are deeply grateful for their dedication and for bringing positivity into a young person’s life! As a part of University Student Volunteer week this year, we would like to take the opportunity to thank all of our UCL volunteers and to celebrate their successes. Below are a couple of stories that we would like to share with you.
Ameerah Patel, who currently studies Psychology at UCL, has been volunteering as a University Student mentor for over a year now. Within this time she has had over 25 meetings with her mentee and has supported her mentee in many different ways. Here is what Ameerah has to say about her role:
“Mentoring is about building a strong connection with your mentee, helping them to build confidence and being someone trustworthy to talk to. I have thoroughly enjoyed my mentoring sessions as they are quite informal, filled with laughter and good conversation. Seeing the progress of my mentee’s confidence in public speaking tasks and taking the lead in our baking sessions is a testament to how effective our sessions are."
"It is also a rewarding experience for myself, a commitment that I look forward to do.”
- Ameerah
Ameerah and her mentee
Alongside this, Ollie Brown has also been volunteering with us for over a year now and has had a very successful year building a strong relationship with his mentee and helped them to explore different GCSE options as well as looking at different learning techniques.
“I started mentoring during the second term of my masters and it soon became one of the highlights of my time at UCL. Over the last twelve months we’ve done so much together, from creating a project on the Battle of Cable Street, making a quiz on deforestation, to practising factorisation. We’ve also been able to go on some trips together through mentoring, including a visit to UCL when we attended the IntoUniversity mentoring graduation. It was great being able to show my mentee UCL!"
"I would wholeheartedly recommend mentoring - it’s been a hugely rewarding experience and I’ve learned a lot during our time together."
- Ollie
Ollie and his menteeWe really value our volunteers at IntoUniversity as IntoUniversity would not be the place it is today without them! If you would be interested in volunteering and want to become a mentor like Ameerah and Ollie, or if you want to find out more information - check out our mentoring opportunity!
Written by Olivia Rawnsley - Volunteer and Training Manager at IntoUniversity