Regional development work
Access keys Skip navigation
Workshop on the links between Citizenship and volunteering
Seven London Further Education Colleges came together in March 2007 for a one day training event (see publicity and programme) delivered by Student Volunteering England in partnership with Croydon College and LSN to help their students engage in volunteering. They created an event linked with Volunteers Week, on 1-7 June which sets out to recruit, recognise and reward work of volunteers across the country.
Specialists from Student Volunteering England’s Further Education Volunteering Development team helped colleges develop skills in volunteer recruitment, project planning and developed a volunteering event to take place at the beginning of June. They also learned about how to gain sources of funding to help them deliver the event.
During the course of the event, delegates learned about how to help develop their ideas in to specific projects to take away and develop and identified the benefits of volunteering for their students, colleges and communities. Delegates also learned through role-plays how to approach funders and looked at how to make a good funding application so they could raise the funding for their chosen activities. Many of the activities they took part in could be taken to the classroom for use with students, such as the Margollis Wheel, Bricks and Hammers, and Action Tree Planning.
The events that they created were varied. One college choosing to plan an internal volunteering event where students would renovate and refurbish the college court yard and common room area, using students skills that they are developing in their courses to transform the college. Many of the colleges used the time to develop collaborative volunteering projects between colleges to help in their local communities and used the time to plan approaching local voluntary organisations to create links.
The response from the day was phenomenal with 93% of delegates reporting the day back as good or excellent and many reporting the opportunity to network was an additional bonus. One of the greatest benefits of the event was that many of the staff that were non-citizenship teachers who developed the skills to deliver volunteering in the context of citizenship. This proves that Citizenship and volunteering is of interest to other teaching staff within Colleges and volunteering provides a valuable spring board for getting other staff involved in the ‘whole college’ approach to citizenship.
For more information about Student Volunteering England’s work in Further Education visit and the resources made availalble to colleges on the day click here.
