Student Volunteering Week: Student Spotlight

12-16 February is Student Volunteering Week in the UK. To mark the occasion, we are highlighting one of our student volunteers, Srig, a second year Law student at New College who has been volunteering at Wood Farm Primary School since December 2022. 

New College has had a formal partnership with Wood Farm Primary School for two years. The partnership has been facilitated by Oxford Hub, a local charity which has created volunteering programmes and community projects across Oxford. Previous projects have included trips to New College, loaning gowns for a university taster day, providing equipment for the school's nativity play and giving school assemblies. More recently, our JCR volunteers helped to build a new pond at the school.

What does your volunteering work at Wood Farm Primary School involve?

This role entails volunteering around 1.5hrs/wk to help with improve and reinforce the numeracy and literacy of KS1 & KS2 students. Like myself, many of the students at Wood Farm learn English as their second language. Therefore, the valuable time communicating and improving literacy skills is very rewarding for not only the students, but also for myself because I'm able to see individuals' progress. Constantly ensuring that such teaching methods are engaging and well-received makes this role a constantly evolving process, which I find very exciting!

Why do you volunteer?

There are many reasons why I volunteer, but fundamentally I like helping others and feeling useful. Therefore, if I'm able to volunteer a couple of hours per week to enrich the education of another student, or even bring joy to a classroom, then I know I've made the decision. Also, this role has made me more productive because by having deadlines looming around volunteering days means that I've got to properly manage my time instead of procrastinating. I could list many other reasons as well, but inherently this experience has been really fun. The students are very excited and engaged when we arrive, and the staff have been incredible.

How can other students get involved?

If you are interested in becoming a volunteer at Wood Farm, get in contact with the Oxford Hub or Daniel Powell who is the Head of Outreach & Communications at New College.