Congratulations to our Silver awards winners Goda, Ally & Adele who all enjoyed themselves at the Volunteering Pop-up awards to celebrate their achievement along with the great successes of other student volunteers. As silver award winners the student have achieved 30 hours of volunteering with their Student Voice roles.

As the forum chair for LGBT+ Goda has been very active student representative. She has attended the UPSU AGM and UEC’s. Goda has held regular forum meetings which are always well attended. As well as this she arranged a drop in session for members to come and talk to her outside the forum meeting.

Goda organised and carried out fundraising for World Aids Day through selling ribbons from the Terrence Higgins Trust and the Rainbow Laces. As well as this she has been helping with the LGBT+ society for Pride on Campus.

Adele has spent her time regularly meeting with the students on her course and her programme lead. From these meetings the students gave feedback and the following are the areas that Adele has been working on.

• Students expressed that they had nowhere to socialise on campus with other higher education (HE) students, Adele took this to the termly meeting of all course reps with the head of campus and it was decided HE students would be given a designated social space.
• Students suggested that they should be able to move classrooms from one block to another, from Adele’s efforts they are now situated in a degree only block providing students an easier working environment and better facilities such as a kitchen etc.
• Students were unable to access a computer room on campus without pre booking. Adele followed this up and HE students were designated a room of computers in the library (8-10 computers), this proved very popular with students and as of now she has been able to secure a computer room with around 20 computers in the HE building.
• Adele has been discussing with Programme Leads submission dates. Several were in close succession and she managed to get students more time to complete assignments.
• Adele attended all course rep training delivered by Plymouth University and following her training, she updated other course reps who were unable to attend the original training.

Ally has spent her time on a number of different projects including organising awards for the staff and students of the Medical School who have gone above and beyond. Ally lead the process of organising these awards and the entire project was organised and run by students.

Ally has spent time developing the Medical Student, Staff Liaison Committee. She has spent time expanding the representation from different programmes within the medical school and ensured that the appropriate members of staff are invited too.

Another activity that required substantial time was later last term was that there was a significant incident with the induction of a new online exam system. Unfortunately, there were major technical errors that compromised the exams validity. It caused wide spread upset amongst students across all 4 years of the medical programme. Ally coordinated reps to gather feedback from students and liaised with the assessment staff to arrange a post test meeting where it could be discussed. Following this she has worked closely with the assessment working group and communicated key messages between staff and students to ensure as much transparency and clarity.

There is another chance for you to be presented your silver award at the May Volunteering Pop-up awards. All you need to do it make sure you are logging your hours and then if you achieve 30 hours in time you will be invited to the award ceremony!

You can log your hours here – Where to log your hours

Here is a guide to logging your hours – How to log your hours in 10 easy steps