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Tertiary Engagement

Volunteering WA convenes the Tertiary Community Engagement Committee, which aims to share good practice in student volunteer management as well as ideas for promoting tertiary volunteering on and off campus. Members of the Tertiary Community Engagement Committee represent: UWA Guild Volunteering, Curtin Volunteers!, ECU Volunteering, Murdoch Guild Volunteering, Notre Dame Volunteer Network and TAFE.

The university volunteer hubs play a pivotal role in connecting students to a wide range of opportunities in the WA community including group-based, one-off volunteering as well as developing and implementing longer-term volunteer programs. These co-curricular activities enable young people to meaningfully engage with real-world issues while building many hard and soft transferable skills.

UWA Guild Volunteering

UWA Guild Volunteering is a joint venture between Volunteering WA and the UWA Student Guild and is the central service for volunteer engagement across the entire university. This year, UWA Guild Volunteering moved locations to a large, well-appointed space, in a high exposure site in the heart of UWA campus, significantly raising the profile of this valued student service.

Changes experienced in the tertiary sector as a result of the pandemic have shifted engagement away from international students who have historically been very engaged in volunteering. Despite this, the value of volunteering remains high with just over 2,000 UWA students logging over 53,000 hours. In an all-student survey completed by the UWA Student Guild in 2020, 55% of students reported that they had volunteered at some point during their time at university.

UWA Guild Volunteering partners with over 320 WA organisations and this year presented over 750 volunteering opportunities across 14 areas of interest. In 2020, students reported education & youth, environment, health and skills-based volunteering as the areas they are most interested to volunteering in. New resources were developed this year to support students to find volunteering that more closely links with areas of studies, such as in legal aid, health, environment, technology, education and communities’ sectors.

UWA Guild Volunteering works to build the capacity of students to lead their own volunteer initiatives and this year saw new student-led programs in partnership with Dogs Refuge Home as well as significant expansion of Social Media for Good program and others. Zoom-based mentoring program, Inspiring Minds Mentoring, in which UWA students supported 16 Indigenous children and children from refugee backgrounds, culminating at the end of 2020 with an action-packed university experience day at UWA. Following the success of the pilot, the partnership with East Maddington Primary School will continue throughout 2021.

National Student Volunteer Week in 2020 was led by a student committee that oversaw a full week of events including a Volunteer Fest with stalls and micro volunteering hopping. Capitalising on uni breaks, a new festive themed campaign, 24 Days of Giving ran through December and involved 16 group volunteer activities that engaged 147 students with all activities booking out within 2 days of launch! This inspired Winter Volidays, engaging over 200  volunteers in 33 group activities with 18 partner organisations throughout June and July.