Impact Conference 2012

Last week we bought you the first update from Farah on the Impact Conference. This week Emma Lindner our other successful applicant reports on her time at the conference. 

Emma at the Impact Conference

As a volunteer with the university my experience has very much focused on one-off volunteering opportunities ranging from walking retired grey hounds and building a Santa’s Grotto in Kingston Hospital’s children ward to fundraising for various charities such as Momentum and Great Ormond Street Hospital. But I was interested in going to the Impact Conference to learn more about the volunteer and charity sector.

Impact 2012 aims to be a national conference on Student Volunteering and social action. The conference was organised by two groups: the Impact Committee and Student Hubs. Students and staff involved with volunteering at various Universities all came to Oxford for the weekend to take part in the conference. We all stayed at the Youth Hostel there which was better than it might sound!


The conference itself was held at Oxford Brookes University and included the opportunity to get involved with interactive seminars and discussion groups, some of which took on a more informative role, others were more for debate. I didn't enjoy the debates as much as the seminars as they sometimes got hijacked by those simply wishing to express their political opinions rather than address the question presented. But apart from that, and the temperature (one day it was -10 degrees Celsius!), my time at the Impact conference was a positive one.

Farah and Emma at the conference

The best part of the weekend for me was meeting other students from different universities in the country from Bristol to Leeds and beyond! There was an opportunity for delegates at the conference to pitch ideas for volunteer projects they would like to run in their communities (imagine a dragon’s den scenario but much less scary!) with the winner getting £150 to start up their project.  For me, hearing what other students wanted to achieve was very inspiring.

The main thing I took away from the conference was a desire to find out more about why people don’t volunteer and in turn the best ways to promote and market opportunities available, but most of all the inspiration of seeing what other students just like you and I are doing all over the country to try and improve the lives of people in their communities and society as a whole.