As we step into summer, the staff at Student Hubs have begun to wrap up the 19/20 academic year and look to next year! We wanted to share some highlights from the month with you all.
Saying Thanks to our Volunteers
The beginning of the month was National Volunteering Week, which is a chance to celebrate the valuable work being done by volunteers all over the country. We celebrated the student volunteers we work with across Student Hubs on #PowerofYouth day from the #iwill Campaign, with a series of four videos. We were especially pleased to share this video featuring Bristol Hub’s current intern, Katherine. She is just one of the young people at the heart of what we do at Student Hubs.
To all volunteers past and present reading this, thank you – we couldn’t do this without you!
Supporting our Communities
Just because the academic year has ended at our partner universities, doesn’t mean our delivery has stopped. Read more about what we have been up to here!
An exciting update for Southampton Hub is that the University of Southampton are providing internal funding to create and distribute a large number of activity packs to the schools the Hub would usually work with. These are a variety of packs for primary and secondary schools including: arts, STEM, outdoor learning and cooking. They will be collaborating with various organisations in the city to create a diverse range of engaging resources for young people.
In Bristol, the Hub has launched live virtual tutoring for Year 10 pupils in Maths, Science and English. So far we have had great feedback from our tutors and tutees. Year 10 is such a critical time in education and having this extra support available whilst they can’t be in school has been invaluable for our tutees and their families.
Quiz Night Fun
The Student Hubs staff team have been enjoying lots of virtual socials from games of Werewolf to pub quizzes. Earlier in the month, Southampton Hub’s lovely Youth Projects Officer, Catherine, made a quiz featuring movie posters with some familiar faces. Can you identify the popular movies these posters belong to? And, perhaps a more niche question, can you identify the Student Hubs staff member on each of these posters?
In the Spotlight
This month we are putting Branch Up in the spotlight. Branch Up provides extra-curricular Saturday activity days for disadvantaged children aged 7-11 in Bristol and Southampton.
Due to Covid-19 several activity days were cancelled, so to continue supporting the young people we work with we created activity packs for the participants and our volunteers wrote letters. 48 young people across Bristol and Southampton received four activity packs: Stay Strong, Branch Up Journal, Pirate Pack and Space Adventure. In addition, they received all of the stationery they needed to complete the packs at home. We have already received feedback from one parent who said they loved completing the activities with their children!
What to Look Out For
- We are doing the final prep for our 2020 alumni survey and we will have it open for your responses over the summer. We are really excited to hear about all the amazing things you are up to and how Student Hubs has influenced your life.
- This month we released our statement about how we are committed to the Black Lives Matter movement and are currently taking the time to educate ourselves and take action where we see injustice in our communities. You can see our statement here and expect to see our plans for this work in the near future.
- If you haven’t already seen we have launched recruitment for our brand new CEO. We’re looking for an outstanding leader that’s committed to youth social action.