We had a lovely chat with Edward from StreetDoctors about their partnership with one of UCL's Student-Led Volunteering group: StreetDoctors UCL.
Can you briefly describe the activities that your participants were involved in?
StreetDoctors is a violence reduction charity with teams all across the UK and six teams within London. We work with young people to give them lifesaving skills. The way we do this is through two different programs. The Violence Reduction Programme (VRP), which is our biggest one and the one that we roll out nationwide. It is a series of sessions, which are called “What to do if someone is bleeding”, “What to do if someone is knocked out” and “Scenarios”.
Then we also have our more costly programme called StepWise, which is an intensive course that builds on the VRP and provides further insight and training, then at the end the young people come out with a qualification. But as I said, the Violence Reduction Programme is the one that I look after in London, and this is our most popular one.
The UCL student-led project StreetDoctors is our North London team, and they deliver mostly all our sessions within the North London area, that covers Barnet, Brent, Camden, Harrow and Islington. They have been active since 2016.
Also, I've just finished a strategy for London and North London is our third most popular team and they deliver the third most amount of sessions, and they have the third highest number of volunteers. So it’s a pretty solid team.
What impact did the Student-Led Project have on the participants and/or your organisation?
Well, we really could not do what we do without our volunteers, they are absolutely fantastic. They run 99% of our sessions and they're absolutely fantastic.
So the North London team, I've observed a few of the sessions that they've delivered and they are incredibly adaptable. As you can imagine, because it's focused on healthcare, absolutely every question comes up when the young people take the sessions. As I said, the volunteers are absolutely fantastic at responding, being flexible to these questions, but also keeping the sessions on path so they're not going off on a complete tangent.
There’s really just fantastic at relationship building with young people and getting them involved, so it's not just them speaking for an hour to the young people. It is about a collaborative effort.
As I said, I really couldn't speak of them highly enough, I'm in awe of them most of the time because the medical field is not my area of expertise and I just sit there and I think that is absolutely fantastic.
Why did your organisations decide to host one of our Student-Led Projects?
So I wasn't here from 2016, but in terms of how we set up a team - we see where there's an area of need and then what the corresponding education around that looks like. So I imagine the North London team needed a group within North London and UCL was the best fit for that.
What advice would you give to another organisation considering whether to host one of our Student-Led Projects?
I think that my best advice would be to keep in touch with the volunteers. The way that StreetDoctors is structured is we have the team, but then there is a team leader within that team who basically coordinates their team. And so that would be my best bit of advice, to have a bit of a structure involved in the volunteer led team, so it just has that one point of communication, but then if you need to access the entire team, that's there also.
We really could not do it without the volunteers. They are our biggest asset. And yeah, as I said, I am usually in awe of them. So I guess a big thank you to them even if they don't get to see this directly, they’re absolutely fantastic.
Your school or organisation is interested in partnering with one of our Student-Led Projects? Find out more information here!