Celebrating Our Student Volunteers

Earlier this month, if you found yourself in the London School of Economics (LSE) library, you may have been at risk of having a much too enthusiastic volunteer team talk to you about volunteering at Turn2us. We were at the LSE’s Volunteer Fair, a super event where we were able to speak to some wonderful people, many of whom will go on to be Turn2us volunteers.

We were there off the back of the crazy success of last years’ LSE volunteer fair, when we were taken off guard by a swarm of politically engaged students, each having done more research on the organisation than the last. (We brought more leaflets this year).

We were then surprised again by how many of those students followed up to kick on and became a Turn2us volunteer. We’re still gobsmacked by the collective impact of those volunteers and the value of that one evening. I will spare you the raw data but I think this article about volunteering by Simran, the brilliant community champion who found out about her role through the LSE’s fair, gives an indication of their impact.

Some roles suit students well

It appears to us that some of our roles seem to suit students particularly well. The community champion role, as Simran wrote about in the article linked to above, seems to fit perfectly around anyone’s schedule and interests, due to its flexibility. We’ve also found that digital buddies are able to do their volunteering from pretty much anywhere, on the sly in a lecture perhaps! We’ve even had volunteers here in the office working with various teams, who have been able to fit it all around their lecture schedule.

Hugely beneficial to us

This is, of course, hugely beneficial for us.

It’s not just been through the LSE, either, that we have recruited enthusiastic student volunteers.

My colleague, Lauren, who has been getting the Community Outreach role off the ground in Coventry, has had similar success through Coventry and Warwick universities.

It’s a great thing for these students too. Having flexible volunteer roles that can be done around other commitments is vital and gives them access to something that can have very significant benefits, as you can read about in our news article: Volunteering in 2019 more important than ever.

Thank you!

So in short: thank you to all our wonderful student volunteers. If you think that these flexible opportunities would suit someone you know, feel very free to send them our way - we really can’t have too many on board!

Interested in becoming a Turn2us volunteer?

Find out about volunteering opportunities with Turn2us

Email us at volunteer@turn2us.org.uk if you have any questions.