Need a volunteer
Does your organisation need Volunteers?
Could your organisation benefit from a student volunteer or a community placement student to help out with a specific project, or as part of your organisation generally?
Active Student promotes a range of volunteering opportunities in the community, voluntary not for profit and statutory sectors to both students who want to volunteer in addition to their studies, and students who are undertaking the Community and Personal Development Module.
Why work with student volunteers?
- Volunteers bring a new perspective, fresh ideas, an enthusiasm to learn, and an extra pair of hands.
- Our students have a diverse wealth of experience and want to get involved with their local community.
Why work with Active Student?
- We are committed to adopting good practice in the recruitment and retention of volunteers.
- We aim to promote safe and supported volunteering opportunities, and will provide support and guidance to organisations if required.
- We aim to match volunteers with placements according to interests, skills and ability.
- We support students throughout a volunteering placement from beginning to end.
- We work in partnership with Project V, the volunteering scheme at Sussex University, so any volunteering opportunity you send to Active Student will automatically be sent to the University of Sussex and promoted to those students as well.
Please note - we cannot guarantee that you will receive volunteers from us, but your opportunity will be promoted to students.
How to get volunteers through Active Student
If you would like to advertise your volunteering opportunities to a student volunteer and/or CPD placement student through Active Student, please complete our Volunteering Opportunity Form. Once we’ve received this completed form, we’ll promote your opportunity to students. Please specify on the form the students you would like your volunteering opportunities promoted to. You can also access information and guidance on the registration process.
Our Placement Visit Process
Active Student is promoting volunteering opportunities to student volunteers and community based placement students. Active Student is funded to appropriately match student(s) volunteers with rewarding, safe and supported volunteering opportunities in the local community. In order to do this we carry out a Placement Visit to all organisations that have been identified by a student volunteer as having a volunteering opportunity they would like to do. All organisations are visited before a student volunteer can start their volunteering.
If your organisation takes a Community and Personal Development module student, the Placement Visit will not be undertaken by Active Student, as the student undertaking the module is instructed to carry out a Health and Safety check with their organisation before beginning their work.
The Placement visit takes around 30 minutes and involves an Active Student worker meeting up with a member of staff from the organisation, usually at the location where the volunteering will take place. At this meeting, the Active Student worker and the representative of the organisation will go through the:
These are generic forms and Active Student works with organisations to fill in the relevant parts for them. We will require information on the Insurance which covers student volunteers, a Risk Assessment covering the activities the volunteer will be involved in, and will discuss Health & Safety and Equal Opportunities.
All the information requested on the Placement Checklist form has to be completed and copies of Risk Assessments need to be received before a student can start their volunteering.
All the information gathered in the Placement Visit will automatically be shared with Project V, the Volunteering scheme at the University of Sussex. This means that the paperwork covers students at both Universities and is valid for 1 year.
If you would like to discuss this further then please contact us.
Key points
- Volunteers bring a new perspective, fresh ideas, an enthusiasm to learn, and an extra pair of hands.
- Our students have a diverse wealth of experience and want to get involved with their local community.
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Active student is the University of Brighton's award winning volunteering scheme, Find our more at www.heacf-awards.ac.uk
Resources
Related links
- Community and Personal Development Module - information for organisations - find out more about this module - CPD module
- CUPP