Activities & Volunteering Big Impact Report 13/14

IMPACT REPORT 2013/14

2013 / 14

BIG IMPACTREPORT

ACTIVITIES & VOLUNTEERING


HEADLINES

• Student groups fundraised their highest total ever, donating almost £180,000 to local, national and international charities

• Community Action has gone from strength to strength, with a record 1706 students volunteering

• We have further extended our discipline linked student volunteering programme and have introduced a society linked volunteering projects portfolio

• The number of student societies continues to grow with a further 24 new societies affiliated in year. Our total number of active student societies now stands at an all-time high of 214

• The Welcome Team had 180 students volunteering, providing vital welcome and support to newly arrived students at Exeter

• Student Media have enjoyed a year of national accolades, strengthening their position as important media for news, entertainment and student voice

• Hall Committees have, for the first time, nominated charities and worked to fundraise for them and support them through volunteering

All of this was supported by the A&V Staff Team:

Sara Bennett Activities & Volunteering Manager

Orlando MurrishEvents, Health & Safety Manager

Joy TaylorDeputy Activities & Volunteering Manager

Olli WhittleA&V Co-ordinator (Activities)

Hannah Langford-ThomasA&V Co-ordinator (Fundraising & Halls)

Gemma MarshallA&V Co-ordinator (Volunteering)


CONTEXT

GUILD MISSION

The Students’ Guild exists to make a positive difference to every student’s ‘Exeter Experience’.

WHAT IS ACTIVITIES & VOLUNTEERING (A&V)?within the Students’ Guild

The A&V unit supports students to participate and engage in student life and in the local, national and international community in a range of ways:

The A&V unit supports students to participate and engage in student life and in the local, national and international community in a range of ways:

• Community Action (CA) – CA exists to provide students with the opportunity to volunteer, enhancing their personal and professional development and benefitting the wider community. The volunteering opportunities on offer are diverse, from one-off good deed projects, to regular volunteering over a period of time where strong relationships with service users are formed. Volunteering might be on campus, in the local community or even abroad

• Hall Committees – each halls of residence has an elected committee. This committee supports students in halls to engage in social and sporting activities, to make friends, to participate in activity to benefit charity and to get the most out of their first year at university

• Raise and Give (RAG) – Raise and Give is a student run charitable fundraising organisation which raises money for local, national and international charities. Each year charities are chosen by a cross campus ballot and the students organise a range of events and activities to generate money to donate to those charities. This year there has been a focus on new and exciting activities and challenges. Raise and Give also supports all student groups who are engaged in fundraising, to ensure best practice and compliance

• Societies – we support and work alongside over 200 student societies. Students’ Guild societies exist to provide all Exeter students with exciting, engaging and fun activities which are relevant to the particular interests of each individual society. Each society runs a varied programme of activities and events throughout the academic year which provide value for money for their members and a chance to develop skills, pursue interests, make friends, develop employability enhancing skills and experience and thrive academically

• Student Media – X-Media consists of a range of student led media:- Newspaper, Exeposé- Online news, Exeposé Online- Radio Station, Xpression FM- Television Station, XTV

• Welcome Team – the Welcome Team is a large group of student volunteers, fondly referred to by students as the Pink Army, who support newly arrived students during Freshers’ Week and in the early stages of settling in at Exeter. New students seek help to make the most of their first week at Exeter, to find their way around campus and the city, to stay safe and happy, to make friends and engage in student activity


• This year has seen record numbers of students volunteering through Community Action (CA). A&V recorded 1706 active and engaged volunteers

• We have responded to student interest by increasing the number of ‘pop up’ volunteering opportunities across the year, including hosting our first very successful Good Deeds Day. This has meant that students who don’t want to commit to weekly volunteering, but do want to be active in mass participation and periodic volunteering, can do so. We will continue to build the Good Deeds Day model for volunteering

• CA has launched four new community volunteering projects in the year including projects to support young people managing chronic pain and a project working with school pupils to support the school science curriculum

• CA saw interest from international students grow to an all time high, with 48.5% of registered students coming from the international student community

• Summer Adventures is CA’s largest annual project. Dozens of local young carers take time away from their regular caring responsibilities to have fun with student volunteers. This year the student led team were successful in securing funding from the True Colours Trust, National Lottery Awards for All and BBC Children in Need. This hard-earned financial boost meant that this year’s camp was available to more youngsters than ever, widening the impact of CA’s dedicated student volunteers

• A group of student volunteers, working in partnership with the charity Kickstart Ghana, travelled to Ghana in summer 2014 to volunteer at a summer school. Kickstart Ghana is passionate about the power of sport and children’s right to play, and specially trained CA volunteers supported the summer school and a reading club for 6 weeks, making a massive difference to the lives of the young people involved

• CA developed a new partnership with Hospiscare and the University of Exeter, and hosted the first Hospiscare Haunted Halloween Hobble and the Hospiscare Open Garden event. We look forward to continuing to work with this important charity going forward

• CA worked in partnership with RAG on the first ever RAG family fun day. This new event saw 500 people come on to campus for a day of community fun, involving liaison with the police, the fire service and the local charity Devon Free Wheelers – the emergency biker service

• CA’s hard work was recognised at the Guild Awards, with CA winning the following accolades:

• Highly Commended Community Impact for Summer Adventures

• Winner Student Led Project for Summer Adventures

• To round off the year, A&V staff supported CA to develop a new brand and to change their name to ESV (Exeter Student Volunteers). This new brand will go live in September 2014 and will take student volunteering forward in a purposeful way

COMMUNITY ACTION


HALL COMMITTEES

RAISE & GIVE

• 2013/14 saw the highest ever number of nominations for Committee positions. This illustrates the importance of the Committees and the appetite of newly arrived students to get involved from the outset and to have a positive impact on the experience of their peers

• This year we held the first ever Hall Committees training conference. Early in their term of office, elected Hall Committee members got together for an intensive training and goal setting weekend conference. This created a fantastic platform from which the Committees were able to move forward and support newly arrived students in halls

• For the first time, every Hall Committee voted on their own nominated charity and worked in partnership with RAG to host fundraising events to widen participation in hall activities and to raise money for charity

• More students than ever signed up to be part of RAG, with over 1,350 active and engaged RAG members

• The academic year 2013/14 has seen a record breaking amount of money raised for charity through student fundraising. The Raise and Give student group raised an incredible £124,050.68, and with active engagement in fundraising from other student groups, the overall Exeter student fundraising total was £174,433.31

• For the first time RAG organised an incredible campaign for Movember, engaging students and senior University staff. Their hard work resulted in them achieving 3rd place in the UK for fundraising for Movember, raising an impressive £13,708

• RAG held their first ever Jailbreak trip, which proved to be so successful that by popular demand it was followed up by a post-exams second Jailbreak. Students got as far as Tenerife and Croatia, and safely back home to the UK again

• RAG celebrated the success of the inaugural Prohibition Ball which took place in February 2014. Flapper girls and gangster guys took over the Exeter Phoenix for a night of exclusive underground entertainment after tickets for the event sold out in 6 hours. The event raised approximately £5,000 for RAG's nominated charities: Devon Freewheelers, Community Action, The Rainbow Trust and Concern Universal

• RAG held their first ever RAG Awards at Reed Hall with engagement from both sponsors and charities

• RAG won the prestigious Student Group of The Year at the Guild Awards, a richly deserved accolade after such a successful year

• Looking to build on success and to modernise their image, RAG’s new branding was well received and has proved to be very popular


SOCIETIES

• This year we have supported the Societies Executive Committee to affiliate 25 new student societies

• At the end of the year we have 214 affiliated student societies, a record high, meaning more and more students can find societies to support to them to pursue their hobbies, interests, passions and CV building. This is crucial for us as we strive to support and represent all Exeter students

• Over the year we have given out more than £12,000 in direct society grants, supporting societies to deliver events and activities for the benefit of their membership and often for the benefit of local communities

• We have supported 5 societies to receive grants from the University of Exeter’s Annual Fund

• The Islamic Society won the Best Islamic Society awards for their Community and Student Union Relations. We are very proud of them.

• One of the theatre societies - Shot Gun – won national awards for Best Actress, Best Upcoming Director and the Cameron Macintosh Award for Best Musical, making their production Spring Awakening the best student produced musical in the UK. This is an amazing achievement

• More and more societies have been piloting their own volunteering projects, supporting local communities in schools, residential care homes and small local charities, to thrive. We are very proud of this development and commit to working closely with all societies who want to develop community facing volunteering

• Our society representative committee, the Societies Executive Committee (Soc Exec), worked extremely well this year. We are proud of all the elected representatives who gave their time to sit on this committee and support society activity at Exeter. Within Soc Exec, student societies are divided into mini forums dependent on their aims and objectives, and we are delighted to see an increase in collaboration within these forums, resulting in activity such as the Interfaith Winter Formal which won Event of the Year at the Guild Awards. Soc Exec were Highly Commended as Student Group of the Year at the Guild Awards


• Our X-Media societies have continued to provide an excellent service to students, alongside providing wonderful volunteering opportunities for would be journalists, broadcasters, film makers, crew and more

• XTV won two National Television Awards in 2014 – Highly Commended for Light Entertainment and Winner for Best Cinematography

• XTV was awarded funding from the University Annual Fund to help them develop an HD channel which will be broadcasting 24 hours a day, 7 days a week – the first station nationally to do so

• Xpression won Silver Award for Best Entertainment Programme at the Student Radio Awards hosted by Radio One

• Exeposé Online had 300,000 visits – a new record for the site – that’s a lot of students getting their news online

• Exeposé was instrumental in supporting the Oppose the Closure of the Women’s Refuge Campaign

• Exeposé started a new “National Student News” column to keep students at Exeter informed about the wider student body and issues which may be of interest and have impact

• This year 180 student volunteers were on the Team, including mature students, postgraduates, undergraduates, EU students and international students

• Student volunteers gave approximately 14,400 hours of volunteering during Freshers’ Week, ensuring that newly arrived students were safe, happy and comfortable in their new surroundings

• The Welcome Team formed new and formal links with Royal Devon & Exeter Hospital for the first time and this is continuing for 2014

• The Welcome Team also developed close working relations with the University’s Estate Patrol, and this has led to two funded support vehicles being provided for Freshers’ Week 2014. This will make a huge difference to the service to newly arrived students

• The Welcome Team were awarded the Highly Commended for Outstanding Commitment to Student Welfare and Support award at the Guild Awards

WELCOME TEAM

STUDENT MEDIA


Activities & Volunteering has the potential to impact strongly on the student experience. Whilst at university, students have ‘discretionary’ time of varying amounts, and those that use that time productively by engaging with Activities & Volunteering at Exeter report a positive difference to their own sense of wellbeing alongside a big boost to their CV and their employability. Coupled with the enormous positive impact that volunteering has in the community; locally, regionally, nationally and internationally, this creates an exciting ‘win win win’ situation for everyone involved.

This year, our increased focus on student leadership development has resulted in the creation of our new LAUNCH Competency Framework which we will actively promote in 2014/15. This will give students the opportunity to articulate their learning and development as it directly links to A&V engagement. There has been a lot of interest in the competency framework across the sector and we are looking forward to launching it fully next year.

Events Support Fast Facts:

• A&V Supported 811 one-off events during 2013/14• These events were all risk assessed to ensure a safe, high quality student experience• In Freshers’ Week alone, A&V Supported 700 events, 86% of which did not involve alcohol• A&V supported an average of 490 activities per week, every week during term time,

totalling 14,700 over the year

Some quick 2013/14 wins to finish:

• We introduced a new paperless e-receipt system in response to student desire for the A&V desk to be more green, and in keeping with the green credentials of the Students’ Guild

• We have started to develop our own Widening Participation work, including a visit from young people at Oasis Brightstowe Academy Bristol

• We have further developed our partnership with Hospiscare and the University, providing ‘pop up’ volunteering opportunities for a wider range of students

• Our first Good Deeds Day as part of National Student Volunteering Week 2014 was a fantastic success, involving new partnerships with five local community organisations and 60 students getting stuck in to positive activity in the local community on the day

• Our new focus on strategically engaging student groups to think beyond providing services for 18 year old undergraduates has worked really well. Student groups in Exeter are now amongst the best in the UK at building inclusion and reaching out to all sections of the student population

• We have processed approximately 1,000 DBS checks for students volunteers, to ensure compliance with safeguarding laws and safety for our students and those that benefit from our volunteering projects


WE LOOK FORWARD TO ANOTHER WONDERFUL YEAR IN 2014/15!

Activities & Volunteering Big Impact Report 13/14

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Transcript of Activities & Volunteering Big Impact Report 13/14