Student Volunteering Week

13 February 2020

This week is the annual Student Volunteering Week, seeing higher and further education institutions work with their students to connect them to and support them with volunteering opportunities. Volunteering is seen to improve student wellbeing, develop employability as well as positively improving the local and wider community. The week is a great time to get more people actively involved in opportunities they may otherwise miss.

While the annual event is a a great way to highlight volunteers and get more people involved, there are others that give their time all year round. We spoke to Amy Esler, an Extended Degree Animal Behaviour and Welfare student, who volunteers for Girlguiding all about her experience.

"The best thing about volunteering is probably the satifaction of seeing the girls having fun," Amy explained. "It's also a great opportunity for them and myself to gain new life skills. Before my volunteering, I wouldn't have been able to set up camp but now I lead sessions on how to do just that."

Amy came to Girlguiding at a young age, finding out about the club through a friend in primary school. Amy spoke about her journey, saying: "Through her advertising guiding, I joined the scheme and have worked my way up since then. In becoming a leader you need to pass a number of assessments to gain qualifications which enable you to do a variety of roles.

"Sometimes you can be managing a small group of girls and other times you might be leading an event. I also lead on finance and the running of the day-to-day activities. Really it's little bits of everything to make the group run!"

Now at university, Amy leads her group in the village hall in Edgmond. "It's nice to have something from home while at university that I can make my own. The group I have at Guides is the perfect counterpart to the close community feeling of Harper - it's a great place to be."

To get a feel for what our Harper Adams community is like for yourself, you can join us on our next Open Day, March 21, and explore the very best of our campus life. Register your interest below.