If you think students spend all their spare time avoiding studying, going out with their mates and having a good time then you'd be right. Well our student bloggers do anyway. While they assure us they don't slack on the study, they've got a lot to answer for when it comes to enjoying themselves while volunteering.

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Tuesday Feb 17, 2009

Choose Leisure Wear and Matching Luggage.

I have to sort something out that has been niggling me a little bit: for someone who writes a blog on 'volunteering', I hardly do any. Twice a week at my local community radio station has been my entire diet of voluntary action since returning to Sheffield early last month.

I hope that doesn't make me some kind of fraud: I certainly tried not to pretend I was anything else but a low-life student. I like volunteering, and I like writing about it too, but I am not saying that I am some archetypal volunteer demi-god.

I have been looking for some new volunteer opportunities though, especially ones that go through my student union at Sheffield University. Especially ones that will help me get through my Law course at Sheffield University.

Unfortunately an opportunity again fell through this week and due to repeated communication failure between me and the organisation I have decided to dolefully give up hope of volunteering there.

However I am going to look for any opportunities teaching English to non-speakers and any one day activities coming up in Sheffield. I'll let you know how it goes.

Oh, and before I go – what about CRB checks? Why do we have to have a different CRB check for each organisation we volunteer or work for? Could we not have one over-arching CRB check which cleared us for a year?

Someone I tried to volunteer with through WWOOF – Willing Workers On Organic Farms – likened the need for so many CRB checks as a stealth tax.

At the cost of £36 each, someone is benefiting somewhere, and it is also so frustrating when you want to take part in something short-notice but then have to wait 4 weeks for your CRB to come through.

Next update should be about online volunteering, including Wikipedia and Youtube.

Posted by Harry ( 1:20 AM )
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