The Social Innovation Programme, also known as SIP, trained and supported teams of university student consultants to problem solve for a social impact community partner.
What is the Social Innovation Programme?
Students learn about social issues in their local community, connect as teams of consultants and do work on live briefs, researching, problem solving and ideating to make change. Ultimately students develop key skills for life and gain professional experience whilst making a difference.
We work with a range of community partners from national charities to local grassroots organisations to community centres. They are supported to write a challenge brief outlining a project they would like support with. Projects range from creating a social media strategy for a charity to engage more volunteers, to drafting a plan for a new grassroots organisation to secure funding, to making recommendations for updates to local community training.
The student consultants receive training in a wide range of topics from project management to public speaking, and receive regular support from staff and mentors. They are empowered to work together to create and present a report to their partner at the end of the eight-week programme.
What’s the impact?
The Social Innovation Programme supports community cohesion, as well as student skill development. To meet this aim we ensure our partners benefit from:
- The new perspectives and energy students can bring to their organisation
- Added capacity to new and existing activities
- Connection to the university and student community
In 2022-23
86%
partners agreed the students added expertise to their organisation
100%
students agreed they developed professional skills from the programme
100%
partners agreed the recommendations added value to their organisation
Becoming a part of SIP allows me to learn and grow with students with different cultural and study backgrounds. Also, it enables me to look at social problems through different approaches and perspectives.
Wei-Jie Yuan, Bristol Hub student consultant
wHY SHOULD WE DELIVER THE SOCIAL INNOVATION PROGRAMME AT YOUR UNIVERSITY?
What our university partners value about the Social Innovation Programme includes:
- Supporting your strategic priorities. Our programme has dual impact: along with supporting community groups or businesses as part of your knowledge exchange activities, our student outcomes can form part of your institution’s approach to educational gains as part of the TEF, and support students’ wellbeing, belonging, and employability skills.
- Building students’ confidence, skills and work-readiness. The Social Innovation Programme is designed as a stepping stone for students to build their confidence for other work-based opportunities. We coordinate the placement partners, train project leaders, deliver weekly training, match interdisciplinary teams, connect teams to corporate mentors, and deliver the launch and showcase events. It’s a highly scaffolded programme designed to build students’ skills and lift them into their next Careers and Employability opportunity.
- Building internal staff capacity and expertise. The Social Innovation Programme is a volunteering programme that reaches 50-60 students a year at our Hubs. For many Careers and Employability teams, delivering a volunteering programme at this scale with internal staffing is challenging. Partnership with us enables your institution to kickstart this delivery, build local connections, and use our tried and tested formula. Our external strategy means if you want to internalise the work, we can help – ask us about handover and quality assurance support.
You might also be interested in our climate focused programmes, Engage for Change and Climate Action.
The Social Innovation Programme is part of our ‘Build’ and ‘Embed’ framework.
The focus on skill development in what Student Hubs does has been evident in the Social Innovation Programme, in front-loading skill development: students go into those projects feeling more confident that they do have the skills and are able to better reflect on their skills, and that work has helped inform the direction we’re taking at the university with students.
Ali Orr, Director of Student Development and Graduate Success, Kingston University