March one-off volunteering update

KUBAG Volunteers survey their hard work!

Another busy month for KUSU volunteers getting involved with our one-off volunteering opportunities. 

First up three volunteers helped with a Cancer Research Fun day. They took off round Kingston town centre to sell pin badges and raise money for this great charity. 

On the same weekend Kingston University Biodiversity Action Group took a tour of campus to sow wild flower meadows.Taking in Kingston Hill, Middle Mill Halls and Penrhyn Road the wildflowers will not only brighten things up they will provide insects, birds and small mammals a vital place to shelter and find food.

You can read a full report of the day and find out what else KUBAG get up to by checking out their blog here.

Sopwith Blossom by Paige Sinkler

KUSU Volunteers have been involved with the Paint the Town Green festival which saw lots of exciting green events take place. Kingston Students were involved in organising the Green Shoots Photography Competition which invited entrants from across Kingston. All 43 entries were on display for a week in Market House in the centre of Kingston including University Biodiversity Category winner Paige Sinkler. A KUSU volunteer helped make this possible by stepping up to answer visitor’s questions and supervise the exhibition.

Finally at the end of the month 5 volunteers went to help at a Refugee Action Kingston clothing day. RAK provides support and advice to refugees and asylum seekers in the local area. On clothing days RAK distribute clothing, toys and other items to those most in need. KUSU volunteers got involved helping out sorting donations, setting up the venue, greeting those attending and distributing the items. Eleni who volunteered on the day reported back that ‘Volunteering at Refugee action Kingston was one of the best experiences in my life. All the volunteers there were very friendly. I was involved in the toy section and it was amazing being with the children!! You should have seen the smile on their faces :)’

Its great to hear the toys went down well because some of those were donated by staff and students at Kingston University. Just before Christmas we organised a toy collection on behalf of RAK and Chase Childrens Hospice. We were thrilled with the response! Donations were split with the first half being delivered to Chase by Societies Coordinator Gemma in time for Christmas and the RAK ones being delivered on the Clothing Day by KUSU General Manager Mark. Big thanks to everyone who made a donation and to Gemma and Mark for making the deliveries.

What's it like volunteering for Nightline?

London Nightline is a confidential listening, support and practical information service for students in London. You can literally talk to them about anything from a good taxi firm late on a Friday night to the moments when all those deadlines just get a bit much. 

They are open between 6pm to 8am every night of term and there are loads of ways to get in contact. You can call on 0207 631 0101, email them, chat via Skype (search for londonnightline) or instant message them through the website. This amazing service is made possible because of student volunteers. 

The best way to find out what it’s like being a Nightline volunteer is to hear from one directly. However this KUSU Volunteer report is slightly different as Nightline volunteers are anonymous! However we didn’t think that should stop them getting the opportunity to shout about the great work they get up to so here’s a little insight…

I’m a third year Kingston student and I volunteer for London Nightline. Nightline is a confidential listening and support service for students, run by trained students. People call Nightline for various reasons. They may call to talk about their problems, or simply to chat about how they are feeling.

Joining Nightline is one of the best decisions I made while studying at Kingston. Through training and being on the line, I learnt so many skills that will remain useful for the rest of my life.

It was also great getting to meet fellow volunteers,  many unique people from universities across London. There are students from various backgrounds studying different courses, but we all have one thing in common – which is passion for helping others. There is also a co-ordinator who is very supportive so you never feel alone.  Fun activities such as trips and night outs are organized for the volunteers on regular basis, which helps you socialise and establish a bond with other volunteers. 

If you have a desire to volunteer and help fellow students – you might enjoy and learn from joining Nightline. I personally feel that I have progressed and grown so much stronger as an individual through having the opportunity to be a part of such a fantastic organisation.

Sounds pretty good I’d say! Applications to volunteer are currently closed but they’ll be recruiting again in October. Keep an eye on our Facebook page and mailing list if you’re interested and we’ll let you know all the details and how you can apply.

Microvolunteering

Back in February as one of our activities for Student Volunteering Week we headed to Roe Vale campus armed with some lap tops and took up residence in the cafe to demonstrate some Microvolunteering. 

www.helpfromhome.org

 

So what exactly is Microvolunteering? Well according to I-volunteer it is 'small, quick, low commitment actions that benefit a worthy cause'. The best examples of this type of volunteering seem to be online. Below is a selection of microvolunteering options for you to have a go at. All the websites below came from Help From Home which provides over 500 microvolunteering actions and were highlighed by VInspired which has helped narrow those 500 down a bit.

 

www.freerice.com

Free Rice is a bit of a classic. It’s a non-profit website run by the United Nations World Food Programme. By answering general knowledge questions your correct answers generate donations of rice. Simple, effective but be warned very addictive!

www.gridrepublic.org

  

Grid Republic will appeal to those with a technical mind. Using this site you can donate your idle PC processing power (with a piece of free software). That excess processing power will be combined with thousands of other PCs to help solve problems for good causes. 

 

www.lochness.co.uk/livecam

Nessie on the Net is a bit of a novelty! A webcam has been set up overlooking Loch Ness in Scotland, to solve the debate over whether Nessie actually exists! If you think you’ve spotted something just click the ‘Snapshot’ button to submit your image. 

www.galaxyzoo.org

Galaxy Zoo is really fascinating. The site contains images of galaxies. The human brain is better at spotting patterns and classifying things than computers so NASA are asking for your help! As you work through you’ll answer questions to identify features and tell one galaxy type from another. The only downside is that the tutorial on how it works is rather lengthy. However once you’ve read it your good to go and can dip in and out. 

www.gwap.com/gwap

Gwap stands for Games with a Purpose. This sight has a range of different games you can play which will help computers learn to solve problems like we do!

 

 

www.answer4earth.com

 

 

Answer4Earth works on the same principle as Free Rice. Using Answer4Earth you work through answering questions. Correct answers collect leaves, then branches and finally you’ve planted a whole tree! 

www.thepetitionsite.com

The internet has proven over and over again how good it is as a campaigning tool. The Petition Site lists hundreds of petitions so you can search through, find a cause close to your heart and add your name to the campaign.

Have a look for yourself and see what you think. From my perspective it wouldn’t beat actually getting out there and volunteering in the real world but its always good to find other ways of doing useful things in your spare time!

February one-off volunteering update

KUSU Volunteers take part in all sorts of one-off volunteering opportunities throughout the year. Here is what they got up to in February!

Momentum Volunteers hand out heart shaped balloons

On Valentines weekend four KUSU volunteers helped local charity Momentum who work to support children and young people with cancer with their Valentines collections. Over the course of the weekend KUSU Volunteers were part of a team that raised an amazing £2,619.39. The charity was thrilled with the amount collected so thanks to everyone who braved the weather to take part. 

 

Walkers wait by the Richmond Venturer

On the same weekend a group of great volunteers helped the River Thames Boat Project. This local charity gives people of all ages the chance to access the Thames, to discover the river and learn about the environment. Volunteers helped with their annual sponsored walk and got stuck in preparing the venue, serving food to participants and marshalling the route as well as generally helping out where they could. They were really grateful to the KUSU Volunteers that took part as you can see here in this piece on their website. Melat who took part fed back that ‘it was a great experience. All the members of the event organisers were ever so kind and extremely helpful. I even had the chance to meet the mayor of Kingston and Richmond as they had come down to show support to the people that volunteered to walk.’ 

Unseen Traffik performance

And finally to top off a busy month (see our last post for February’s SV  week activities) KUSU volunteers spent the weekend of 17/18^th February helping the Active Communities against Trafficking London Forum raise awareness of this important issue. Unseen Traffik used dance and drama to tell the story of a young girl who is trafficked from Nepal to India. Volunteers helped set up the venue, assisted with the auction held on the night and also got to watch the performance! Shanté who took part said 'the show and the auction was a great way to raise awareness of the situation, and to fight it!'.

Huge thanks to everyone that got involved!

Student Volunteering Week 2011

National Student Volunteering Week took place from 21^st-27^th February. To mark it KUSU Volunteering organised a week of activities and taster sessions to give Kingston students an idea of the sort of things we get up to all year round. We had a crazy busy but great week catching up with some of our current volunteers and meeting some new faces. Thanks to everyone who got involved! Here’s a run down of what we got up to. 

 

Across Monday, Tuesday and Thursday over 20 volunteers got together to take part in ongoing project Knit For Babies. Volunteers came together to knit (or learn to knit!) hats for premature babies at Kingston Hospital.  It was so popular an emergency run was made for further supplies... it isn’t often you get to panic buy knitting needles! 

  

On Tuesday evening the exciting team from IYAF (International Youth Arts Festival) came to talk about volunteering with the festival. It takes place 1^st-18^th July, and is designed to showcase really high quality work by young people. It covers both visual and performing arts, so will involve painting, film, graphic design, dance, drama, sculpture, mime, puppetry, carnival, circus skills… it’s set to be a fantastic event. Perhaps the best thing about it is that it’s all about getting young people into the creative arts, so there’s tons of scope to get involved in the organising and running of the festival. 

Wednesday morning meant a trip to Hersham Hounds. The kennels are home to former racing greyhounds who have retired from the track, and are waiting to find new homes as family pets. We took the dogs for a walk round their field - with the peace, quiet and all the trees it’s like being in the middle of the countryside, though you’re only thirty minutes from Kingston! We’ll be heading back there to help paint the kennels at some point in the next few weeks.

On Wednesday afternoon a group of intrepid KUSU volunteers working with Cathedral Camps came together to learn about the history of a beautiful old building in the centre of Kingston and give it a bit of a spring clean. We spent a very relaxed afternoon learning about ancient relics, polishing ornate carvings, brass and chairs and eating homemade biscuits.  The staff at All Saints Church were so pleased with our efforts we’ve made the Parish newsletter!    

 

On Thursday evening we ran an information session on how to run your own project. KUSU Volunteers can access funding and support to make their ideas happen and be in charge of their very own community project. Some great ideas came out of the session and we look forward to working with those who came.

On Friday we headed to Roe Vale to talks about Micro-volunteering. For those not in the know about this new craze in volunteering circles this means quick online volunteering. Most popular was the ever classic Free Rice and Answer4Earth, where you answer questions and end up planting  a tree with your correct answers. We’ll be doing a blog post soon to explain more.

 

Tragically on Saturday we had to postpone our Pond Clearance at Kingston Hill because the builders unexpectedly cordoned it off! It won’t get neglected though because KUBAG: Kingston University Biodiversity Action Group will be back to get stuck in later in the year. In the mean time they’ll be getting on with planting wildflower meadows! 

A pretty packed week I think you’ll agree. To check all the photos head for our Facebook page. All that’s left is for us to tidy the office and start planning our next events!   

One-off Volunteering

My name is Emma Lindner. I joined KUSU Volunteering at Kingston University at the beginning of my second year. I had done some volunteer work at college and missed doing something other than reading textbooks and going to lectures so I thought it would be a good idea to get involved! 

Since joining I have done a number of one-off events such as helping as a steward at the Bloomsbury Festival, building a Santa’s Grotto in the Children’s ward at Kingston Hospital and some orchard management and tree planting at Dorich House. I also recently volunteered to raise money for the charity Momentum in the town centre and got involved in a number of events during Student Volunteering Week including walking the retired grey hounds at Hersham Hounds!

Emma and Fay volunteering at Bloomsbury Festival

As you can tell, there are a huge variety of activities you can get involved in especially doing the one-off events. This is just one of the reasons I volunteer, there are so many opportunities to learn something new, meet new people and of course that warm, fuzzy feeling you get when you’ve helped someone else! There is also that inevitable cliché we are all familiar with: it looks great on the CV! We’ve all heard it before but it is true that employers want to see you did something other than go to lecture theatres and bars during your time at university and so volunteering shows that you are an interesting person worth hiring! 

Another great thing about the one-off events is that you can fit them in whenever you have time which is great if you’re not sure you can make a commitment to something more permanent. You are guaranteed a lot of fun and I’ve made some good friends from volunteering so I would advise anybody thinking about getting involved to go ahead and do it! You won’t regret it!

Volunteering with the MET Police!

My name is Christine Daniel and I am a Metropolitan Police Special Constable!

Being a Met Police Special basically means that I have all of the same powers of arrest and entry as a regular Metropolitan Police Officer. The only difference is I volunteer! I volunteer out and about in Wandsworth Borough of London which includes; Putney, Battersea, Clapham Junction, Tooting, Earlsfield, Nine Elms and Wandsworth. 

Here’s a little picture of me in uniform with the class that I trained with.

I volunteer a minimum of 16 hours per month, but you can do more, essentially the Met Police require 200 hours per year, so if you wanted you could do the whole thing in two months, but as most volunteers do, they have a few other commitments! 

The police service is a really rewarding job to do, you meet all sorts of people and everyday is a new learning experience. Since I haven’t been able to do much patrolling because I’ve been run over by Uni, I would say that even graduating from the ‘crime academy’ (!) was the most rewarding thing, because you’ve learned, in a short space of time, the incredible amount of knowledge that Met Police Officers have, met the most wonderful people, like my colleagues and my sergeants and your learning always continues as you have first aid training every twelve months, Officer Safety Training every six months and people training everyday!

If you want to join the Metropolitan Police as a Special Constable, then go onto the Met Police website and join up, it’s the last generation being recruited now, so get applying!