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 | Olivia | Sammy | Ashley | Tom | TomG | Harry

Sunday Jul 15, 2007

Post exam developments

 Hello again everyone, I hope you are all well and enjoying the beautiful English weather. I wont have to be worrying about it for too much longer as I am just in the process of packing to jet off to beautiful Dubrovnik for a family holiday.

Quite a bit has happened since I last blogged. I have just started my handover period at the Liverpool Guild Of Students, ready to take over as Vice President Communications at the start of August. I have also spent the last month as a volunteer play worker at the Greenhouse Project in Toxteth.

After returning from my holiday visiting Katy in Spain and having adequately chilled out and relaxed after a mad term I wanted to get back out into the community and make a difference. Also on a purely selfish level it would be fun and get me out of the flat. An opportunity arose for me to volunteer in the Greenhouse Multi-cultural Play and Arts Project in Toxteth.

The Greenhouse Project was a fantastic opportunity to utilise the skills that I had acquired the year before working as a paid Play worker for the Wirral Play Council. Part of the training for the Wirral Play Council was a Level 1 NVQ in play, although the course was a lot of common sense, the course bought it all together and added practical advise, there where some incredibly important sections on Child safety and spotting the signs of abuse, although horrible to sit through the it is important to make sure that we are all clued up and know which procedures to follow. Working at the Greenhouse project was a great experience, luckily for the first week the weather was brilliant so we were able to get out and play football, Frisbee and tick. Playing outside in a safe environment is one of the most rewarding elements of play and the children seemed to love the competition and activity as well.

While at the Greenhouse project I was able to forge new links for the LSCA, as Networking Officer it is part of my responsibility to find and initiate new opportunities for LSCA volunteers. On September the 29^th the LSCA and the Greenhouse Project will be carrying out a day of volunteering. The one off project will look to get Freshers hooked on the spirit of volunteering and greatly regenerate the Greenhouse Project. Over the next month I will look to help facilitate this project, but as I will be working full time at the Guild, the issue is going to be balancing LSCA and the Guild. I would love to carry on volunteering as much as I have this year, however this isn't going to be feasible, so I have to be realistic as to what I can achieve.

It's bye for now and will write more soon.

Tom x

Posted by Tom ( 5:58 PM )
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