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.

All | Emma | Olivia | Fiona | Sammy | Ashley | Rochelle | Tom | TomG | Harry

« Previous month (May 2009) | Main | Next month (Jul 2009) »

Monday Jun 15, 2009

End of the student year....

"I don't know what you are complaining about – us students work 10 hours a day, 7 days a week, for 2 weeks a year."

And that's only true if you work hard during exam time. However, as exams are for some reason an inherent part of the University experience (like debt), I suppose it is only fair to note how it can affect volunteering as a student.

Under some blind assumption that I was going to do some revision, I actually asked both the Citizens Advice Bureau and the Sheffield Live radio station whether I could cancel all of my commitments for three weeks over my exam period. Thankfully they were fine with this, and I guess that is just one of the more obvious upshots to some types of volunteering – as long as people aren't too dependant on you, it can be very flexible.

After my exams, I started drinking and smoking again. But aside from this, there was also a 'volunteering showcase' of all the work that the volunteering committee at my university has done over the past year. The start of this showcase was a kind of gentle social mingling affair, and so I excelled in socially awkwardness and knocking into people. More importantly though, towards the end there were speakers from charities, schools and the Lord Mayor about how they had benefited from the volunteer work done by students here in Sheffield.

I think volunteers generally do things regardless of whether they might by thanked or not, but this was better than a 'thank you' - it provided examples of what had been achieved by volunteers over the year, from helping children get through their exams, to raising money for cancer care. Which can show a lot more than a 'thank you' anyway, and is probably a better way of recruiting/keeping more volunteers.

Speaking of the flexibility of volunteering, I'm moving home for a while now, so I'll have to see what else I can get up to in terms of volunteering

Posted by Harry ( 10:33 PM )
Link to this post Comments[0]

Monday Jun 01, 2009

Volunteering with politicians

The summer is finally here and is going full steam ahead. So is my volunteering.

On the 22^nd of May, I started a casework internship with a Liberal Democrat MP (not naming names due to issues of confidentiality). When I finished my exams, I knew I wanted to do something different, for the summer, from the current volunteering that I am doing, which is based mostly around research, law, young people and music. I am currently doing a degree that combines Law and Politics.

So, when I went to a meeting with my study supervisor at my university, she advised me to also focus on the politics side of my degree. This is when I started looking at the website of Working for an MP, where I then found the above opportunity, went for the interview and got the position. Although I have just started the position, I find it thoroughly different from anything I have pursued before. As a casework intern, I have already learnt effective methods of referring people's problems to specific council members, how to maintain effective communication with a constituent, how to summarize large bits of information and how to write effective letters.

As well as this, I have gained a wider understanding of the campaigns that this MP is passionate about, through the pre – election preparation. My previous assumptions have been challenged as I have realised that an office of an MP can be extremely busy, that they do try to act as advocates of the general public and that, even in today's world, they can still be said to be fully representative of the views of the public. In the future, I am also going to be able to sit in with this MP when she has meetings with the public just so I know what kind of issues are present in this constituency and am also going to take full responsibility for helping people with their problems through the telephone.

Things also took a very exciting turn for me, this month, as I am now not very far from qualifying as a generalist advisor with the CAB. I have just finished a course which mainly involved me practising my interviewing skills on a variety of legal topics that included employment and benefits. After this practice, I could finally be unleashed on the general public! From this course, I learnt that I had to go over many of the legal principles that I had learnt already, had to slightly amend my communication technique and mainly just had to show the client that I was listening to their problem. I think the hardest thing for me in the course was learning that there is not always going to be a positive solution for the client. In many cases, all we can really do is listen as their problem has gone too far.

Lastly, I also visited Portcullis House, Westminster on behalf of IARS. I went to a debate, conducted with some politicians and young people that centred on the issues of Young People and the Criminal Justice System. My objective was to take notes on the debate so I could write an article for IARS Youth Voice Journal based around this. I found this day very disappointing as the politicians who were present did not really answer any questions clearly. This debate was meant to produce change and was a chance for politicians to show that they are on a young person's side. Instead, the politicians just churned out information that we had heard before and surprisingly, were not such effective speakers. I have yet to meet up with other IARS volunteers and write this up. I will keep you posted.

Here's to next month and let's hope it is as good as this month was. I will also be talking about Lifetracks and how people can still get involved!

Posted by Rochelle ( 3:02 PM )
Link to this post Comments[2]