On Monday 19 June, the Students' Union Volunteering Service had the chance to bring London Nightline and 10 brilliant students together at UCL East Campus: One Pool Street to support the charity through a Social Hackathon.
What is a 'Social Hackathon?'
Our Social Hackathons are our problem-solving and solution-creating events that give UCL volunteers a first-hand insight into the third sector. In one day, volunteers problem solve, devise and implement solutions to the issues our Community Partners face.
Want to hear more? Here is one of our Volunteers!
Read on to hear the experience of one of our student volunteers, Rachel Chan, as she explained her motivation for joining a Hackathon and what she got out of the day.
The Social Hackathon in June has been an eye-opening experience to me. It has not only been a creative initiative to tackle contemporary problems in society, but also an opportunity for personal growth.
There are multiple reasons that prompted me to sign up to the Hackathon, but a specific one stood out to me.
Having heard Nightline’s reputation in mental health among university students, I wanted to learn more about the organisation and potentially help with their work.
As someone who has had mental health issues, I recognised the importance of continuous support for students. This is why I wanted to equip a better understanding towards how these types of support take place and sustain.
For that to happen, meeting staff from Nightline was the perfect opportunity to talk with them regarding these matters.
In the Hackathon, we were presented two challenges. These were volunteer recruitment and engagement.
I worked with four enthusiastic teammates on volunteer engagement and we designed a presentation on how to increase engagement. It was an exciting and fun challenge, similar to unpeeling onions where you get to see more and more layers as you delved into the issue!!
In a day’s time, we have managed to come up with a presentation encompassing four dimensions:
- survey
- community
- personal growth
- scheduling
The format of the Hackathon took was very flexible, where volunteers got to take on different roles and work in different teams simultaneously. I am glad to have met like-minded peers who engaged well with the challenge and came up with amazing ideas. I used to have a fright over teamwork, but this has been a pleasant and rewarding experience overall.
Throughout the process, I have developed different skills unconsciously.
Besides this, I have also developed better problem-solving skills. Often, we needed to see through the different phenomena to get to the crux of a problem which requires our analysis and observation. Creativity would also be needed to deduce solutions tailored to the situation.
Communication skills are a key one as we got to work as a team, while not knowing one another beforehand! There are times when we needed to negotiate our different opinions and make our job division clear, given the limited time for devising a presentation.
I have also developed better problem-solving skills. Often, we needed to see through the different phenomena to get to the crux of a problem which requires our analysis and observation. Creativity would also be needed to deduce solutions tailored to the situation.
I have gained confidence in presenting as I got to present my group’s product to (literally) someone in the industry! It has been a pleasure to be recognised with the proposals that we have shared.
Certainly, there have been loads of learning and enthusiasm.
Moreover, I have gained confidence in presenting as I got to present my group’s product to (literally) someone in the industry! It has been a pleasure to be recognised with the proposals that we have shared. Certainly, there have been loads of learning and enthusiasm.
I am surprised about how much I could make out of a day. Social Hackathons have proven that volunteering could be easy, thrilling, and enjoyable.
If you would like to put yourself to challenge, or simply contribute to the community during holiday breaks, definitely go for it!
Want to find out more about what is happening at UCL East? Click here!
Want to learn more about the opportunities the Volunteering Service offers? Click here!