National Student Volunteer Week

National Student Volunteer Week was celebrated on 10-16th August this year. It is a week that offers organisations the opportunity to acknowledge the impact made by students through volunteering. The theme this year was: Collective Impact: Give. Grow. Connect. This promotes the idea that together student volunteers make a collective impact on Australia. Specifically, when they give to a cause, it allows them to grow and flourish, while simultaneously connecting them with like-minded people.

While volunteering this year hasn’t looked the same as previous years, we have had a number of our student volunteers generously demonstrate their commitment to supporting the education of children facing disadvantage by pivoting into our letter writing programs.

There are two letter writing programs that allow Ardoch’s Education Volunteers to continue volunteering in remote circumstances. The first program provides our volunteers the opportunity to exchange letters with the class they were volunteering in prior to shut down, to continue the connection with the students. The second is through Ardoch’s Literacy Buddies® program.

We interviewed and featured several of them over the week on both our website and social media.

Here are some highlights of what they had to say:

‘I volunteer to make a difference in someone’s life.’

‘I believe in the power of words and how they can contain warmth and power and bring a positive energy to the recipients.’

We cannot thank our student volunteers enough for the continued commitment and enthusiasm they show in supporting the education of children facing disadvantage.