Know a club, society, or student volunteer who's made a difference? Nominate them ❤️ for an award.

As we approach the start of a new academic year, we thought we’d let you know about some of the developments in the world of UCL student community volunteering, and what we have planned for the coming term. Enjoy!

As ever, please feel free to get in touch with us with any comments, questions or suggestions at [email protected]

Volunteering Awards Ceremony

UCL volunteers make such a big difference within communities and charities around London, so one of the highlights of our year is when we get to say ‘thank you’ at our Awards Ceremony. The 2022 edition was particularly special – it was our twentieth ceremony, and the first one to be held in the fantastic surroundings of the UCL Bloomsbury Theatre. More than an awards ceremony, the event is a celebration of every student volunteer’s contribution to the communities across London and beyond. Read more.

UCL Charity Consultancy Challenge

Over the course of five very intense days in June, seven teams of UCL students took part in our first ever UCL Charity Consultancy Challenge. Their task – to help our community partners find solutions to some real-life business problems. Their projects included policy work, data analysis, volunteer recruitment strategies, developing new products and campaigns, training development and more. Find out how they got on.

Afghanistan one year on - the UCL student response

Throughout the last academic year, UCL students were busy fundraising and volunteering in response to the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan. When Camden charity Hopscotch put out a call for volunteers to support Afghan refugees placed in local accommodation, two teams of UCL students stepped forwards. The UCL Fun Team – who usually run play activities for children in local hospitals – offered to run their programme for refugee families.  Meanwhile, UCL Impact Initiative set up conversational English support for adult refugees. In additon, our Student Union societies got involved with fundraising. Find out more.

Alumni stories - Adrianna Chmielewska

We’ve recently been catching up with some of our former students to find out how their volunteering experiences have been useful in their careers. One example is Adrianna; she got involved with education charity Action Tutoring whilst studying Comparative Literature and is now working as a teacher. “Volunteering gave me a valuable first experience of working with young people in a school setting … I learnt how important it is for young people to have someone patient, kind and compassionate to guide them through exam revision, but also to have someone to talk to about anything else that happens in their lives.” Read Adrianna's story.

“The students came up with new thoughts and ideas that perhaps we wouldn't have thought of as an organisation.”

Kelly Mcloughlin from homelessness charity Thames Reach has been working with one of our student-led Projects, Open Space Redevelopment, to improve gardens and green spaces used by the charity’s clients. “A lot of the time the green spaces are not being used and, certainly post COVID, what we found was that the gardens in our projects have gotten really overgrown and clients have stopped using those spaces.” Read our interview with Kelly.

Student-community research partnerships: the Community Research Initiative

During 2021-22, our Community Research Initiative supported at least 23 research projects that were each co-designed to meet a need for a master’s student, their dissertation, and a community organisation. Saskia Van Kesteren was one of those students; studying in the School of Planning, she collaborated with Sarah Hoyle at Kentish Town Community Centre. Although at first Saskia felt a bit overwhelmed by the possibilities of collaborative research, she and Sarah were able to come up with an exciting project. Read more on our website.

Coming soon

We’ve got lots of new activities planned for the coming months. For the start of term, we’re working with community partners to offer a wide range of one-off volunteering events so students can get started with volunteering as soon as they arrive at UCL.

Our Community Research Initiative will be holding a Dissertation Showcase to highlight the fantastic collaborative research students have been doing with community partners. Book your ticket for Thursday 29 September.

With the opening of the first building at UCL East, the new campus in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, we’ll be connecting students there with volunteering opportunities across east London.

We’ll also be holding the first UCL Volunteering Week (31 October – 6 November) with lots of volunteering events. Later in November, we’ll be holding our Project Leader Development Day, organising another round of Social Hackathons, and launching an exhibition celebrating twenty years of student community volunteering at UCL.

If you’d like some guidance with developing your ideas into research projects, save the date for our free Research Consultancy clinic on Thursday 8 November - more details soon.