Bristol Hub Impact Report 2016:17

IMPACT REPORT 2016/17

Supporting students to tackle social challenges, learn about issues and connect with each other.

Bristol Hub is a branch of Student Hubs, a registered charity in England and Wales, number 1122328 Strategic Partners:

About Bristol Hub Bristol Hub supports students to take part in meaningful social action, which makes a positive impact on their local community.

We recognise that an individual’s time at university will affect their future career, habits, interests and the causes that they invest their time in. We aim to mainstream social action involvement for students as part of their university experience, inspiring them to become active citizens for life and make choices which are socially impactful.

Student leadership is vital to our approach. Across all of our programmes, we provide students with the opportunity to take leadership roles; coordinating local volunteering projects, managing committees, running conferences and leading consultancy teams.

We also work closely with community partners to ensure our work is responsive to the needs of beneficiaries.

Community partners benefit from the time, energy and skills of young people who want to make a difference.

With our support, students are more confident in approaching challenges and leading their own projects, while making a difference in their communities.

Bristol Hub is a branch of Student Hubs, a national charity working in towns and cities across the UK to transform student involvement in social action.

This report sets out the impact of our work from September 2016 to July 2017

We monitor a number of outcomes to show the positive impact we are having on both students and community partners. We received 63 student responses and 13 community partner responses to our end-year feedback forms.

What Students said....

90 % of students agreed that their confidence in approaching new challenges had improved

90% 79% of students agreed that their of students agreed that they ability to work with others to felt more confident leading make change happen had others to make change happen improved

What Community Partners said....

100% of partners rated the quality of programme delivery as either better than average or one of the best

100% 100% of partners involved in the of partners agreed they would Social Innovation Programme recommend working with the agreed or strongly agreed that Hub to another organisation they benefited from working specifically with students

Volunteering This year students have volunteered as chefs, consultants and tutors; using their expertise and developing new skills. We’ve delivered sessions on crafts, coding, and run around in muddy fields.

We collaborate with students and community partners to deliver volunteering programmes which are impactful, and support students to connect with their local community and each other.

Each programme is led by a student committee and supported by Hub staff. This approach increases student learning and leadership.

We see volunteering as key to tackling social issues, developing empathy and understanding, and helping students develop the necessary skills for creating social impact.

This year we have supported...

43 673

Community Projects

Beneficiaries

192 Volunteers

Our Volunteering Projects include: Schools plus Desk to difference Forest Schools Code Club LinkAges Just Eat It! Activate ABC

Focus On... LinkAges This year we launched LinkAges in Bristol with support from the Henry Smith Foundation, Dulverton Trust and the St Monica Trust. LinkAges is our intergenerational volunteering programme that aims to tackle elderly isolation through running activities that facilitate interaction between students and older people.

We have worked with the St Monica Trust to develop activities which enable students and residents to share skills, expertise and interests, and understand each other better. Students have volunteered as IT helpers, crafted with residents, and have even helped out with a pottery class! We have also piloted dementia memory aid activities with care home residents, in collaboration with medical students at the university. Next year we will continue to develop this project, in order to support students to take part in a series of memory aid sessions, and to raise awareness of the difficulties facing those with dementia.

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36 volunteers took part in LinkAges activities

beneficiaries took part in LinkAges activities

Monica Carp, Resident at the St Monica Trust "I think the whole idea of the Hub and the skills swapping is really good. They teach us about IT and we can teach them things like sewing, knitting and crocheting, and have a good chat and a cup of tea, and that’s what it’s all about.

Students are much younger and they’ve got a different outlook on life. You can talk about all sorts of interesting things."

Ayat Said, LinkAges Volunteer "Working with Bristol Hub staff is enriching and valuable. The level of support I received for LinkAges is tremendous. It gave me confidence in my role as I knew that I had the support for any issue that may arise"

Skilled Placements In 2016/17 we ran more skilled placements in Bristol than ever before. Skilled placements are structured placements through which students can gain an insight into the social impact sector by working directly with social impact organisations such as charities, social enterprises and community groups.

The Social Innovation Programme: The SIP is a 6 week pro bono consultancy programme through which teams of students work with an organisation on a brief about a challenge they are currently experiencing. At the end of the programme students report on their recommendations for the organisation.

13 Organisations

79 Student Consultants

Jye Allen, MSc International Development, SIP Spring 2017 Team Leader, Avon Wildlife Trust “I got involved in the social innovation programme because I wanted to gain work experience and knew the programme would look good on my C.V. I also wanted to push myself out of my comfort zone! We worked with Avon Wildlife Trust to locate businesses they could partner with for fundraising purposes. We really added capacity to their work by talking to many businesses across Bristol and forming relationships on behalf of AWT. My confidence in leading really grew (I wasn’t motivated to be a leader before!). I really enjoyed leading, which surprised me! Taking part in the SIP gave me real world work experience, with a safety blanket. It was interesting to find out more about AWT and what they actually do, and be exposed to what actually happens in the charity sector.”

Liz Roberts, SARSAS “Our experiences of working with students on the SIP was very good. We had 6 committed students working on the project, who worked really well as a team. They went above and beyond in their research.

It was really good to have work happening remotely and was a different experience to the traditional volunteering work we do. All we needed to do to get the project off the ground was give an idea!”

Skilled Placements The Social Impact Voluntary Placement: Through the SIVP students are placed for 6-8 weeks over the summer with a social impact organisation to gain meaningful work experience and an insight into the social impact sector.

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University of Bristol students will be taking part in placements this summer Dr Knut Schroeder, Founder & Director, Expert Self Care Ltd "Hannah took on the role of Project Manager for developing a new wellbeing app for students. She conducted user research and connected with student wellbeing experts, using her insights to design the app from scratch. Hannah also came along to a national student health conference and helped us build new relationships with university wellbeing teams.

Having Hannah work with us as a student intern has helped enormously in moving our project forward, and we're sad to see her leave! Working with a social impact intern has been an enormously positive experience for us - massive thanks to Hannah and the amazing team at Student Hubs!"

All skilled placements have a dual-positive outcome; to support organisations to improve their outcomes for user groups by increasing their capacity and providing new perspectives, and to give students the opportunity to learn about social issues in greater depth whilst developing and applying crucial professional skills

Events and Engagement Events are the first point of engagement for many students with the Hub, and we aim for them to be student led, diverse and exciting in content and format, and to engage with a broad range of students.

This year events have included: a panel discussion on homelessness in Bristol, a film screening exploring alternative economic models, a talk on voluntourism, a charity pop-up shop, gardening at the multifaith chaplaincy, letter writing sessions to support refugees and more! Phew - it’s been quite the year!

50 Events 1410 Attendees 42 Training Events 461 Attendees

Focus on: The Careers Beyond Profit fair

87%

Careers Beyond Profit is the Hub’s annual careers fair, and is run in collaboration with the Careers department.

This is an opportunity for students to meet and talk to of students felt more representatives from social impact organisations and find out about opportunities such as graduate jobs, internships motivated to pursue a career and volunteering. It offers students an alternative to the in the social impact sector careers dominated by the big graduate recruiters and after attending the fair gives them the opportunity to explore other potential career paths.

University of Bristol

Looking Forward We are going into 2017/18 having recruited strong student committees to take the lead on our student engagement work and our volunteering programmes. We look forward to supporting another cohort of students to confidently lead others to make positive social change. We are excited to see how their energy, ideas and new perspective will shape the direction of Bristol Hub. We will continue to collaborate with departments across the university to support their aims on student development and community engagement. With our experience delivering social action and the innovative approach of Student Hubs, Bristol Hub is well placed to work with the university to adapt to the changing needs of students, employers and communities. We will continue to push student social action up the university agenda, and share learning from across the Student Hubs network on how student social action can support student retention, attainment and wellbeing.

Next year we will also continue to develop the effectiveness and reach of our projects We will particularly focus on how we can further work with older people with dementia, as this has been identified by care homes as an area of high need. We will also be looking at ways we can work with other organisations in the health and social care sector that could benefit from student-led social action.

“Bristol Hub grows from strength to strength each year and this last year has been no different, running an amazing array of projects from Forest Schools to LinkAges.

The students running the projects have been excellent, I can't wait for next year.”

Martin Wiles, Head of Sustainability at the University of Bristol

Bristol Hub Alumni This year Student Hubs launched its first Graduate Survey to gain insight into Student Hubs alumni, including their understanding of social issues, their careers and whether they still volunteer or not.

We caught up with some Bristol Hub alumni to, to see what they have got up to since their time at university.

Eleanor Lloyd, Programme Support Officer at Envision

“I took part in the Ethical Internship Scheme (as it was known then) and was matched with national youth education charity Envision for a 6 week summer internship. I enjoyed the internship so much that I signed up to volunteer for Envision in my final year. For me it was the first step towards a career in the third sector. With the experience I gained, I took up a part time role at local charity EACH during my final year. I secured a place on the Envision graduate internship. I discovered my strengths in interpersonal communication, coaching and project management. With the confidence I gained I looked for more opportunities to broaden my skillset. Since finishing my internship I have continued to progress in the organization, now working as a Programme Coordinator and in August I will begin a new role as Programme Manager where I will manage the next cohort of Interns. I am really grateful for the Ethical Internship Scheme for enabling me to get into the third sector and discover that I love working with young people to help fill the gaps in their development left by the school curriculum.�

"I was involved in coordinating the 2012 Bristol Climate Action Forum, which I then helped to rebrand as Bristol Futures ForumI got involved in these because I wanted to be involved in sustainability activities at University and build my skill-set.

The futures forum was an educational event that reached about 70 people per year. I've heard anecdotally from my co-founder at Lettus Grow that the event was the reason he became interested in vertical farming. I can only presume that the speakers have similarly inspired other students over the years! It gave me the organisational skills and confidence that I needed after leaving school, and allowed me to take on responsibility at a young age. This helped me get a job after university, which then led into me starting my start-up.�

Jack Farmer, Founder and Director at Lettus Grow

With Thanks...

Martin Wiles and the Sustainability department, Jo Hutchings, Maxine Sims, Laura Steele, Stephen Le Fanu, Dave Jarman, Amy Walsh, Dani Glazzard, Hannah McGough, Amy Butlin, Samantha Budd, Hannah Tweddle and the Team at the SU, our Schools Partners, David Sutton and the staff at the Avon Club for Young People, Imogen McIntosh and the volunteers at Aid Box Community, Wendy Hodsdon and staff at the St Monica Trust.

Our Student Committees: Sophie Davies, Mhairi Tordoff, Grace Kendrick, Becky Hall, Jennie Payne, Kirsi Sumray, Pat Gregory, Lily Blake, Francine Long, Margot Tudor, Frances James, the Schools Plus committee led by Claudia Chan, the Code Club Committee led by Alvina Kam, the BIDC committee led by Cate Nye, the Just Eat It Committee led by Rosy Scholes, the Desk to Difference committee led by Sofia Soares, and the Activate committee led by Hadya Shawki.

And to all our volunteers whose hard work and dedication has made an impact on the Bristol community.

Wendy Hodsdon, Volunteer Coordinator at the St Monica Trust.

“Bristol Hub is the place to come if you want to do something that’s not just about doing good to people. It is actually about becoming part of a community, and helping to keep that community vibrant.

The concept of Student Hubs is not to be a volunteer brokerage service, because it’s about social action. I think those messages right from the start means that students can have much more of an impact on an individual’s life, and enhance their life through the relationship.

Bristol Hub has enabled our residents to contribute, and to feel that they have still got something to give and to share with people, and I think that’s the real gift of LinkAges.”

Want to work with us in 2017/18? Whether you are a student, university department, potential community partner or social impact organisation, you can find out more about how to get involved with our work at www.bristolhub.org/partner or by emailing info@bristolhub.org Bristol Hub is a branch of Student Hubs, a registered charity in England and Wales, number 1122328 Strategic Partners: