November Update: One Community Forum, ‘Mapping Your Future Pathway’, Branch Up, and Invent Plus
November went by so quickly that we forgot to do our usual update — oops! But what a month it was. Here are some of our highlights…
One Community Forum:
At the start of the month Southampton Hub held it’s first ever One Community Forum, which gathered individuals from the University of Southampton, Student Hubs and local community to consider the biggest issues in Southampton and what Southampton Hub could do to tackle them. This is a longer piece of work funded by the UPP Foundation and will see lots of new exciting long-term volunteering projects, campaigns and other opportunities offered by Southampton Hub next term.
To find out more about what happened at that event and the issues discussed, read our Youth Project Officer Sophie’s blog from earlier this month!
‘Mapping Your Future Pathway’:
Throughout this month the staff team have also been very busy delivering a brand new workshop to 400+ Year 9 students from across Hampshire, Dorset and the Isle of Wight in collaboration with Widening Participation at the University of Southampton.
The two hour workshop is based on materials from our Empower mentoring programme and supported the pupils to consider their aspirations, strengths and weaknesses, network with other school pupils and eventually map out their future pathway. The workshops were a great success and it was fantastic to see our Empower programme reach so many young people.
Branch Up:
Our programme supporting disadvantaged 7–11 year olds, Branch Up, has kicked off in full swing with two activity days in November, and one in early December. In the first two activity days, the children had lots of fun creatively making their code of conduct, doing arts and crafts and going on a scavenger hunt on Highfield Campus. The second day we took the children to Hands on Humanities Day and had our former Projects Officer, Clara Johnston, come back to support the day which was a huge surprise for our children who took part last year and volunteers. Thanks so much to Clara for supporting that fantastic day!
Invent Plus:
Invent Plus is a programme which Southampton Hub have been thinking about for a long time, and finally the programme has launched this year! Youth Projects Officer Sophie and Invent Plus Coordinator James have been working hard to get the engineering workshops off the ground and looking at collaboration with Engineers Without Borders. The workshops took place this month as part of Code Plus delivery and was a huge success. We’ve got more workshops scheduled for next year so if you’re interested in taking part, check it out here.
That’s it for November! Keep up to date with our Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and website in the meantime for any updates, and we look forward to seeing you all in December.