We’re thrilled to be sharing the plans for our upcoming Winter Fundraiser, and all the exciting activities, events, opportunities and ways you can get involved from Monday 29th November to Sunday 5th December.
What we’re fundraising for
Student Hubs have been delivering activities for young people facing disadvantage in their communities for over a decade. This year’s Winter Fundraiser is celebrating 10 years of our Schools Plus delivery, which has provided free tutoring support and activity clubs to young people in primary schools, secondary schools and colleges since it’s development in 2011.
This is alongside our various other bespoke programmes which support young people in our 5 Hubs: Empower (mentoring), Youth Theatre (drama sessions), Invent Plus (engineering workshops), Active (sports activities), and Hiraeth (activities for refugees and asylum seekers) for example. Connecting young people to our passionate student volunteers is a core part of our work in our Hubs, and the experience of the past 18 months has only shown us how vital this work still is, and will continue to be.
Across the 2020-21 academic year, we managed to reach 1500+ young people directly through 70+ community partners (including families), and the efforts of our 400+ student volunteers across Bristol, Cambridge, Kingston, Southampton and Winchester.
We want to channel our energy into continuing to run free programmes and interventions for young people, removing barriers to opportunities and adding much needed capacity to our schools, families and youth groups locally. This has been one of core delivery areas for a decade, and we want to see another decade of this provision across our growing Hub network.
Your donation will support us to continue to invest in the sustainability, growth, and logistics involved in making our programmes accessible, safe, and helping young people and students to thrive.
What we’re doing during the Fundraiser
We have a range of activities held over our fundraising period which you can sign up to, share, or get involved in:
- On Monday 29th and Tuesday 30th (#GivingTuesday), we’ll be sharing our case studies of 10 years of Schools Plus, the impact of our youth programmes over the last decade, and sharing more about our work across the 2020-21 year which has only emphasised how vital our activities are. If you have taken part in our youth programme delivery as a student, an alumni, or a staff member, why not share your memories and how our work has made a difference to you?
- On Wednesday 1st December, we are bringing back Super Satsuma Day – a celebration of the fantastic students we engage with across the year, and encouraging you and your student networks to get involved with the campaign! You can donate by text, through JustGiving, or donate your time and connections by sharing the campaign with your social networks. That evening, our staff Liz and Laura will also be running a Sims 4 Twitch Stream – join us to see 2+ hours of Sims gaming and donation challenges!
- On Thursday 2nd December, our Southampton Hub team Catherine and Sapthi will be running 3 workshops which focus on empowering the next generation of students and young people. Join us that morning from 9.30am for workshops about supporting students to thrive in their opportunities and development, peer support and networking, and a case study of our youth work and student support – including what you can do to support students who are passionate about engaging the community – from recent University of Southampton graduate and new staff member, Sapthi. Tickets are £20-£40, depending on how many sessions you want to attend.
- On Friday 3rd December, we’re running two fun workshops and collaborating with Salsa y Sol to bring you a Zumba class, so join us in your lunch break! You can take part in our Woolly Matters crafting workshop with our Winchester Hub team: bring your knitting needles, crochet hooks, and yarn, and create with us from 12-1pm. Or from 1-2pm, you can join our Cambridge Hub Manager Toby to learn more about British Sign Language, the Deaf community, and practice the basics with others. Tickets for each session are £5.
- On Saturday 4th and Sunday 5th December, we’ll be counting down to the end of the campaign, reflecting on our work over the past decade, and encouraging those final donations to reach our £2000 target from individual donors and businesses!
Take part in our 7 Days of Orangemas campaign
The 7 Days of Orangemas is a fundraising challenge that we want individuals to take on either during the fundraising week (w/c 29th) day-by-day, or to commit to doing the 7 day challenge across the month of December.
The 7 Day challenges include:
- Day 1: Wear Hub orange
- Day 2: Bake or cook something
- Day 3: Do a physical activity (e.g. dance, desk-yoga, go for a walk)
- Day 4: Wildcard – decide your own challenge!
- Day 5: Nominate Student Hubs for Movement for Good’s £1000 charity draw
- Day 6: Learn about a social issue
- Day 7: Share an orange with a friend, family member, peer or colleague
People can commit to fundraising for us via our JustGiving page, signing up to create a fundraising page. We wanted a personal challenge for our fundraiser this year which can help you to share our campaign with your networks, do something fun this festive season, and try reach a goal of £100 for our campaign. It’s also interactive campaign – we want you to share your images or videos of the week’s activities, Student Hubs will share your campaign, and cheer you on! We appreciate and really value any money raised in benefit of us this December.
Interested fundraisers can go to our JustGiving page and follow the below tips:
- Go to the ‘Fundraising’ button on the right side
- Create an account if you don’t already have one for JustGiving
- Choose an option for what type of event they are planning – you can do your own activity (JustGiving gives you examples!) or take part in the 7 Days of Orangemas
- Fill out the relevant information
- Your page is pre-set up with Student Hubs branding, and you can edit this page too to personalise it
- You could also make a ‘team’ which links other relevant pages from other individuals – this could be useful if you’re taking on the challenge as a team or Hub committee
- Reach out to Fiona at fiona.walsh@www.studenthubs.org to let her know your page is live – she can then connect it to our Student Hubs page so your donations and motivational messages from donors come up on our Just Giving page
Thank you for your support!
We want to thank you in advance for your support in donating, sharing, and getting involved with our events during the campaign. There’s still time to support if you’re a business or organisation, see this blog for more information and get in touch with Fiona Walsh, Partnerships and Development Director, at fiona.walsh@www.studenthubs.org to enquire about supporting.
If you’re a student, alumni, or supporter of Student Hubs, you can share the campaign, take part in a fundraiser via JustGiving (see instructions above) for the 7 Days of Orangemas or by creating your own event/challenge, or submit your quotes, videos, or memories of being involved with our youth work across our Hubs. You can donate to the campaign either by getting involved with our events, by text, or through JustGiving – see our donate page for more information.
We will also be encouraging individuals to nominate us for Movement for Good’s 12 Days of Giving campaign. They will be drawing charities to receive £1000 for 12 days across the festive period, and we would love this donation to go towards our youth work. Movement for Good were vital for launching our youth programme, Inspire, Debate, Change, which runs student-led workshops with young people about civic engagement, democracy, and getting involved in local issues. It only takes a couple of minutes to complete the form, and you could help us win the draw! You can nominate us here, our charity name is Student Hubs and our number is 1122328, and our charity type is ‘Education and skills’.
We would also love you to become a regular donor, if you’re thinking about which charity to support in 2022. You can donate regularly through our new individual donation page, and a regular donation is vital for us as it means an income stream we can count on. By becoming a regular donor, you get to make a sustained impact for us at Student Hubs – see our video by Winchester Hub student Harry on why you should donate here.