November Digest

Posted on: 25 November 2022

Southampton Hub

Southampton has launched a variety of their projects including Branch Up and Invent Plus this month. A few weeks ago, our volunteers started their volunteering journey – making a change in the community. The staff team have worked hard to recruit, train and induct students for these projects and with their committee’s support, their projects have had a successful start.

At the first Branch Up day, 14 young people joined to play some team games as an icebreaker to introduce the young people to the volunteers. As part of this day, they have made team flags with paint and glitter following by a capture the flag game using the flags made. In the afternoon, they played parachute games and lots of climbing, zip wiring. 

Invent Plus volunteers have delivered a Civil, Aeronautical and Electrical Engineering sessions for primary school students in Year 5-6 and Year 9 secondary school students.

group of volunteers and young people playing the parachute game  Two young people building a bridge using marshmallows and spaghetti

Climate Action Bristol

Climate Action Bristol (CAB) is one of our Skilled Placements, delivered by Bristol Hub. Bristol Hub has seen increased interest in CAB this year and have 25 students taking part in the programme, working with six partners. The partners are local organisations who want support with their climate action plan, this year partners include a local primary school, the University’s Global Lounge and a creative education company. 

Group of students sitting around a table

November Team Time

Every month, our staff team comes together to connect, socialise and work on national items. This month, we took the time to dive deeper into our Programme Quality Frameworks to improve our projects and identify resources which will take our projects to the next level. Alongside this, we spent the rest of the day focusing on Equity, Diversity and Inclusion including training on micro-aggressions and a session on decolonising. Over the last few years, we have been looking closer to our work and decolonising, watch this space for more updates.

In the Spotlight

This month, I would like to put our One-Off Projects on the spotlight. These opportunities allow students to volunteer without the commitment to long-term activities. We see the benefit in our one-off projects for both the students and the community. This month, our Southampton Hub ran a planting activity at Portswood Rec, planting over 1000 bulbs.

Group of students smiling to the camera holding shovelsGroup of students planting bulbs in a parkl

What to Look Out For

  • Student Hubs Book Club is opening to the public very soon.

If you are a book lover like most of our staff team, we are launching our Book Club in January. Beginning of this year, our staff team created their own Book Club and we wanted to share the love for books with all book lovers in our network. We will be launching our Book Club on Discord. More information will be shared soon on our Alumni Network Facebook group.

  • Student Hubs Social Action Zine is available to Pre-Order.

We are excited to say our Zine is about to be released! You can pre-order our Zine from #GivingTuesday (29th November) and we will begin delivering them (either virtually or in print, depending on what option you choose) in December. Numbers for physical copies are limited so pre-order now to avoid disappointment. Read more about our zine here.

  • Alumni Wrap-Up

Check our instagram stories for our usual biweekly alumni wrap-up for more news and opportunities. The next Alumni Wrap-Up is today! 

Unsal Kaynak

Unsal Kaynak is the Kingston Hub Manager, and he also leads the Alumni work at Student Hubs. If you have questions or want to get in touch you can email him at manager@kingstonhub.org.

Tags: Alumni, Community, Social Action


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