Teaching and research are not the only areas of Imperial College’s activity affected by spending cuts. Earlier this autumn, Imperial Volunteer Centre announced that
due to reduced funding from a specific scheme administered by the Higher Education Funding Council for England, the Imperial Volunteer Centre has…been forced to review its activities.
On its website, IVC used to host a searchable directory of volunteering opportunities. Organizations needing volunteers could submit their opportunities to the database, and students (and staff) could search for opportunities, filtering by category, length of commetment and location. IVC facilitated contact between the volunteer and the organization, and served as a port of call if there were any problems with the volunteer placement. It is this brokerage service that has been withdrawn.
It is a shame that this service cannot continue. As IVC list on their website, similar services are offered by national as well as local organizations.
So, why should students be interested in volunteering?
I confess, I have always been somewhat community minded. When I was an idealistic teenager school pupil, one of my proudest achievements was press-ganging convincing the whole school to collect their plastic cups for recycling. We completed the recycling circle by buying pencils made from said cups, and selling them in the School Shop.
No, it was not me who came up with the slogan.
In light of the withdrawing of IVC’s brokerage service, here are some anecdotal reasons why students should volunteer.
- Time
As a student, and particularly as an undergraduate, your time is your own in a way it has not been before, and probably won’t be for a while afterwards. If you are taking a course which is heavy on contact-time, or you have to balance studies with other responsibilities, then maybe volunteering is not for you right now. Your lecturers are not going to appreciate it if you cut class to go out doing good. But if your schedule is a bit flexible, then now is a good time in your life to consider volunteering.
When I was looking for volunteering opportunities, I deliberately picked one with a time commitment I felt I could manage – about two hours, twice per month – making my volunteering efforts more likely to be sustainable. My placement is also flexible enough – I stopped volunteering in the run-up to exams, and picked up again afterwards. I know one student who spent one night per month answering the telephone for Nightline whilst studying to be a vet. (Not actually at the same time!).
You could consider one-off opportunities too. I often spot IC students helping at Exhibition Road Festival, and I know of one student who went for a week to the Centre for Alternative Technology in Wales – volunteering and a holiday rolled into one.
- CV points
When I turned to volunteering as an undergraduate, I was less concerned about the future of the planet than the future of my career – I wanted to plug a specific gap on my CV. In the event, my career took a different path to the one I was thinking of when I started volunteering. But, two and a half years on, I am still volunteering.
CV-building is a common motivator for volunteers, and some opportunities have an obvious match with career plans. For scientists, outreach is one area to consider. Imperial will continue to operate its own outreach activities, coordinating a range of opportunities which would be particularly appropriate for someone considering teaching or science communication after they graduate.
My volunteering placement has developed my soft skills in some unexpected ways, from communication (explaining Facebook to someone who has never used the internet…or teaching a computer novice how to use a mouse) to crisis management (when a housebound pensioner expecting your visit does not answer the door nor the telephone).
- Do something different
Being a student (and particularly being a PhD student) is immersive. Students are expected to work hard, and I am not advocating volunteering as an excuse not to be working, but being a desk-bound student I find that taking a little time to do something different to the day-to-day helps to give me some a fresh perspective. I am a befriender (similar to this) – I visit a housebound local resident in their own home, for nothing more complicated than a nice cup of tea and some company (for them(!)).
For IC students, the withdrawal of IVC’s brokerage service might make volunteering opportunities less of a doddle to find. If you feel inspired to give volunteering a go, starting points might include do-it or your own university’s RAG society or outreach service.
Great post, Erika – and something I know something about, even if vicariously. Mrs Crox runs Volunteering, the in-house magazine for a charity called Volunteering England, a subset of which is really big in coordinating student volunteering. And guess what? VE gets its core funding from the government, which has been slashed, so VE’s activities will be substantially reduced, and Mrs Crox and half of the workforce are likely to face redundancy. The Big Society, eh?
Well done on the cups-to-pencils scheme, Erika – very impressive!
There’s an interesting development in Germany right now: the social sector has for many decades relied heavily on
the cheap labourthe help provided by young men who did not want to do military service for various reasons. Both military service and its alternative are now practically going to be abolished, which might leave big gaps in the social sector everywhere. The politicians hope to fill these gaps with a new scheme for (paid) “voluntary service”. I am rather curious to see how this will develop.@cromercrox – Similarly, the funding that paid for the administration of the befriending scheme has in fact been withdrawn. I can continue with my placement, but no new befrienders are being matched with people who would appreciate the support. The other week, I helped my befriendee fill in a form sent by the council giving her views on the changes to social care provision in the borough. She is not going to be too badly affected at the moment, but for people with higher care needs I think life is going to get increasingly difficult.
@steffi – I was proud of the cups – to – pencils exercise. However, a related campaign to persuade the school to install solar panels on the roof did not get approved! All over Europe, it is going to be a tough time for many who rely on the care and voluntary sectors.
We need to ask the government if our society looks big in this.
But seriously, it’s a real shame that the program has been cut. This might sound like a perpetual motion machine, but could the brokering service, previously funded by the government, actually be run by volunteers as well?
Jenny, there are a couple of things.
One is that you could continue in that vein – for example, Mrs Crox’s job could, presumably, in principle be carried out by a volunteer. However, some jobs are best carried out by someone trained, experienced, and who is not going to take a several-week-long break because they have exams coming up, or whatever.
With the brokering service in particular, it was more than just maintaining a database – there was a certain amount of vetting (on both sides). The staff also helped with things such as CRB checks, and there was some support for IC staff who wanted to get involved with volunteering (the details of which I don’t know – they are not relevant for me). Students could use their volunteering experience to work towards some sort of qualification/award – again, I didn’t pay attention to the details because I didn’t want to do it. These functions would be a lot for a volunteer to take on. Given that such databases/brokering services are available through other channels I think the most efficient thing is to direct students there, but the brokering service at IC was so easy, for volunteers and charities alike.