Find Your Cause Workshop

You want to make a difference. But where do you start?

🕓 Duration: 1.5 hours
📍 Location: TBC
💡 Suitable for: Beginner friendly, no prior knowledge needed
🍴 Lunch provided: Always! Plant-based and nut-free
💬 Led by: SU Social Impact Team aka experts in connecting you with causes you care about 

Maybe the climate crisis has you questioning whether we’ll even have a future before your first coffee. Maybe it’s inequality, education, mental health, homelessness, or the ever-growing list of causes you care about, until somehow you know all about the problems and very little about what to actually do about them.

Or maybe you just know you want to do something useful, but haven’t quite figured out what yet. Between lectures, society sign-ups, and the Week 1 reading you’re definitely going to get to, that’s pretty understandable.

After all, there are a lot of ways to make a difference and, unfortunately, no Moodle page telling you which one is yours. So, we made this workshop.

Taking place:

• Mon 5th October 12:30-14:00 
• Tues 6th October 15:00-16:30 at Entrepreneurship Summit 
• Weds 7th October 18:00-19:30 
• Weds 14th October 18.00-19.30 

Over 1.5 hours, we’ll help you work out what you actually care about, what meaningful action can look like, and what you could realistically do about it at UCL and beyond. 

Across this interactive and supportive 1.5h workshop, you'll learn how to:

1. Identify a cause that you genuinely care about
2. See what meaningful social action actually looks like
3. Explore how you could take this action
4. Understand what your next steps are

You do not need to arrive with a chosen cause, volunteering experience, or a fully formed plan to change the world. Though if you do have one, I guess we’ll hear you out.

You can quite literally just show up. We’ll also give you lunch, because we've been told changing the world is harder on an empty stomach.

This event is free. You'll just need to log in with your UCL account to book, which takes a few seconds.

FAQs

I know basically nothing about social impact. Can I still come?

Please do! This workshop was made for you.

We’ll start from the beginning, so there’s no expectation that you know the terminology, have volunteered before, or can produce a ten-year plan for your social enterprise. 

I already know what I care about and have some experience contributing to social causes. Would this still be useful for me?

Absolutely! While our workshop is beginner friendly, we'll also dive into frameworks around collective action and social justice to help you deepen your focus and understanding. Plus, it's an opportunity to grow your social impact community and make new friends and allies in your work.

I'm a bit nervous. What if I don't know anyone?

You definitely aren't the only one! 

Our super-fun team (zero bias) will be there throughout, and they’ve designed the session to make getting to know people considerably easier. There’s also zero pressure to speak if you don’t want to. You can listen, join in when you feel like it, and participate as much or as little as feels comfortable.

I have an access need that's not covered by your event description. What should I do?

Please email us at [email protected] and we'll do whatever we can to accommodate your needs. Here's some examples of how we've supported students in the past:

• Guide person to collect you from public transport or other point of arrival
• Large-text or dyslexia friendly printed materials provided 
• BSL interpreter on-site