October is always a busy month at Student Hubs. Our team have been promoting our programmes, recruiting and training student participants, finalising details with partners and beginning to empower young people to make change. Read on for a taste of what we have been up to this month.
The Social Innovation Programme
As you may know, the Social Innovation Programme is our flagship skilled placement. Students work in teams on a brief provided by a local social impact organisation. Previous briefs have included researching community cafe models for Cherry Hinton Community Hub in Cambridge, improving the volunteer recruitment process at FoodCycle in Bristol and creating a social media strategy to promote the Chat Tea Cafe in Winchester.
This month we have seen the first cohorts of the 2021-22 academic year launch in Bristol and Winchester. At the Bristol launch 20 students met their teams and learned more about their brief from our community partners. They were also able to meet their mentor from our partner Burges Salmon. Mentors offers support and professional advice throughout the programme.
One-off Volunteering
This year has only just started, but the Winchester Hub committee have been busy. They kicked off the term with Project SOUP, an initiative which raises awareness of food waste whilst fundraising for our programmes. Our intern, Rosanna Foster, promoted the event, collected food waste from local organisations and on the day supported student volunteers to make and sell delicious soup, as well as passing on some of the unused surplus to students on campus for donations.
Last week, Winchester Hub also organised a Tea Party. Local residents in the city joined students for a swinging 60’s afternoon. This included singalong sessions, afternoon tea and a history quiz!
Our Team
In October we welcomed two new members of staff to the Student Hubs team, wrapping up our summer of recruitment. Lydia Ferguson joining the Winchester Hub team as Programmes Manager to deliver Schools Plus and the Social Innovation Programme. Sapthi Santharuban joined the team as Southamptons Hub’s Youth Projects Officer. As the name would suggest, Sapthi will be delivering all of our youth programmes in the city including Schools Plus, Branch Up, Libraries Plus and Invent Plus.
Both Lydia and Sapthi are Hub alumni. Lydia is the ex-Winchester Hub President, and Sapthi spent the final year of their degree tutoring as a Schools Plus volunteer and coordinating Libraries Plus homework clubs. Read about what we’ve learned through out summer of recruitment in our blog series; Six Top Tips to Ace your Application and Top Tips for Employers to Making Recruitment More Inclusive and Fair.
Welcome to the team Sapthi and Lydia, we are so excited to see what the next year holds.
In the Spotlight
This month we want to put Students to Inspire in the spotlight. Students to Inspire is a new pilot project being delivered by Bristol Hub, in collaboration with Tales to Inspire. The team are supporting student participants to collect and share stories of people in the community. So far students have attended two sessions on the Power of Stories and they are beginning to explore what and how they want to share.
What to Look Out For
- Our Recent Graduate Survey is open. If you graduated in the class of 2021 and you were involved with one of our Hubs, please complete it to let us know what you are up to and support our work
- In case you missed it, we are asking Student Hubs alumni and current students to share their thoughts on our work and our potential direction for the future. This will inform our strategy moving forward. If you have 10 minutes please share your reflections via our questionnaire
- Our November webinars are in the diary. All students can attend our free session on Networking and Collaborating with Organisations, whilst higher education and charity sector staff can learn more about Embedding Student Leadership into Programme Design
- On 25 November from 12-1pm, our Cambridge Hub Programme Manager, Laura Bea, will be delivering a Lunch and Learn workshop on Ecological Grief and Managing Eco-Anxiety. This is open to the Student Hubs staff team and our alumni network so please sign up if you are interested in joining
- We are delivering two upcoming training sessions for our new members of the team and we thought we would extend the invitation to our alumni community. If you would like to join our Unconscious Bias training on 8 November from 1-2pm or our LGBTQ+ Awareness training on 23 November from 3-4pm for FREE please reach out to sophie.payne@www.studenthubs.org. If you think your organisation might be interested in this training contact our Partnerships and Development Director for more information on our training packages at fiona.walsh@www.studenthubs.org