V-Bite Week 6

V-Bite 8th November 2010 Hi Everyone It is not too late to sign up for our one-off volunteering opportunity on the 16th November, perfect for those of you with limited free time: Garden Clearance and Preparation You will volunteer alongside University of Brighton students on the Brighton and Hove’s Food Partnership’s Harvest project, specifically their ‘Grow Your Neighbours Own' Scheme, a landshare scheme designed to help gardeners with little or no space grow on land that is not being used for growing. You will help to clear a care home garden so that it may be used for growing.

Date: Wednesday 17th November Time: 9.30 AM- 3 PM (actual volunteering 10.30 AM-2.30 PM) Activity: basic gardening skills such as tearing up weeds, bushed and clearing a garden to make it ready for growing vegetables.

Food, transport and gloves are provided. There are 5 volunteer spaces available.

To take part in this volunteering opportunity, you need to register with us – first, book an appointment with us - have a look on our website to find out when student appointments are available, and then e-mail projectv@sussex.ac.uk

VOLUNTEERING OPPORTUNITIES We have over 250 volunteering opportunities registered with us of which most recruit all year round. This week we registered the following new volunteering placements with us:

1) Events Officer (552) with Adventure Unlimited: Adventure Unlimited run outdoor activities, such as kayaking and climbing at a number of venues across the south-east, for children and young people. The activities are focused on the development of life skills and ensuring that everyone can achieve, whilst having lots of fun. The project's mission is to enrich the lives of young people, in particular those from disadvantaged backgrounds, through outdoor adventure and education events, run by previously unemployed adults. The project operates day events and camps for up to 6000 individuals each year.

As an Events Officer, you will be responsible for organising fundraising events. You will be encouraged to think creatively about the type of events that you would like to run and the project will work with you to make it possible.

2) 4 Volunteer Roles with Sussex Central YMCA Right Here project: Right Here is a joint project between Sussex Central YMCA, Mind in Brighton and Hove and the Children and Young People’s Trust, to build resilience in young people, promote awareness of young people’s mental health issues and to improve local services. Sussex Central YMCA offers help to many different young people, but especially those who are isolated and disadvantaged through homelessness, exclusion from school, family breakdown, mental or emotional health issues, and drug or alcohol problems. a) Right Here Youth Panel Member (547) where you will work in a team of up to 12 young people aged 16-25yrs on the Youth Panel, the Right Here's creative and decision-making body, concerned with raising awareness of mental health issues. b) Right Here Activities Volunteer (546) where you will work with the Activities Coordinator to plan, develop and implement a range of resilience building activities to 1625 year olds. c) Right Here Campaign Volunteer (545) where you will assist in the planning, development and implementation of the campaigning work of Right Here Brighton and Hove, to promote the emotional and mental wellbeing of young people aged 16-25 yrs.

d) Research & Evaluation Volunteer (544) where you will help develop, influence and support the evaluation of Right Here Brighton and Hove and assess the impact of the project on the resilience and mental & emotional wellbeing of young people aged 16 – 25.

3) 4 new volunteering opportunities with Read International: READ International delivers collaborative, student led initiatives to improve access to education across the world and increase youth participation in the global community. The flagship project, the READ Book Project collects disused, high-quality textbooks from UK Secondary schools to send to Secondary schools in East Africa. Student volunteers also give Think Global workshops to school pupils to promote student volunteering, young enterprise, recycling and global citizenship.

READ has also developed a new project called the Campus Book Drive; this is a smaller project aimed at collecting any kind of book. a) Resource Collection Project Leader (536): Each book project is run by project leaders who are expected to work together throughout the year for the good functioning and completion of their project. Each project leader takes on one aspect of the project which they are responsible for throughout the year. As the Resource Collection Project Leader, you will be responsible for leading volunteers in gathering approximately 40,000 textbooks and other educational resources, including sports equipment and teaching aids and collecting them at a central location. You then coordinate sorting through the textbooks, matching the relevant books, of which there are usually 25,000, to the Tanzanian syllabus and planning for the books to be ready to be shipped. b) Fundraising Project Leader (427): You will be responsible for leading a team in raising a grand total of ÂŁ7,500 towards READ International project costs. You will plan and organise fundraising events, contact local trust funds and businesses for funding and motivate your volunteers to plan their own fundraising events. You also need to keep track of the project finances. c) Youth Engagement Volunteer (537: You will spend half of your time generating interest among schools and

youth groups for the READ programme and the other half coordinating and delivering it. You will recruit a number of volunteers to assist you with this. They will have to be dedicated and prepared to work alongside you to contact youth groups and schools to generate interest in the kind of things READ can offer, as well as then delivering presentations and visiting after school clubs.

Your role will be diverse; you might be attending a regional teachers conference one day, organising volunteers to give a presentations on another, or working with a Scout group the week after. You will be responsible for recruiting up to three people and managing them to ensure your project is involved with 10 separate youth groups (either at school, or through clubs/societies). d) Volunteer Van Driver (549): You will spend a day/half a day helping the READ Book Project Sussex team to collect textbooks from secondary schools. You will take these books to the project’s storage location in Brighton.

These books will be shipped to East Africa in summer 2010, and distributed to secondary schools.

READ International also have a previously registered volunteering opportunity, READ Book Project Volunteer (428) where you’ll be working with the student Project Leaders (for Resource Collection, Fundraising & Youth Engagement) to achieve the target of shipping 25,000 high quality books to East Africa in June 2011, and raise £6,000 to make this possible.

There is a huge variety of activities to get involved with to achieve this. You’ll have the opportunity to take part in book collections - liaising with teachers and visiting local schools; to get creative, helping to think up, plan and organise fundraising events; the chance to take part in training devised in partnership with Oxfam, and get involved in leading ‘Youth Engagement’ workshops in secondary schools. Through this, you’ll pick up and develop a diverse range of skills, to help your future career prospects.

The following project is also especially keen to recruit volunteers: 1) The Lighthouse Arts and Training Ltd is a leading arts and film development agency based in central Brighton, developing exhibitions, events and talks for the public to experience and learn from. The project exhibit work that is film and technology-based, including artists’ film and

video, digital art and photography. They also support artists and filmmakers to develop professional and creative skills, through mentoring schemes, networking events and by hosting talks by national and international artists and filmmakers. They are keen to recruit volunteer ‘Exhibition Invigilators’ for the current Brighton Photo Biennial which finishes on the 14th November.

Volunteer ID number: 530 Under ‘Arts/Media’ in Activity Search Under ‘Arts/Media’ in Area Search.

To get brief details of these opportunities (and all those we have registered), use the ‘Opportunity Search’ facility on our website: www.sussexstudent.com/volunteering/ Then if you wish to find out more about how you can get involved in any of the opportunities, contact us on projectv@sussex.ac.uk to make an appointment to register with us.

PLEASE KEEP IN TOUCH! For those of you who have registered with us (returned your Project V Placement Joining Form) please don’t forget to let us know if you have started volunteering.

You just need to e-mail projectv@sussex.ac.uk and let us know what project you are volunteering with, what date you started volunteering and how many hours approximately you are volunteering each week.

Also, if we have contacted you by e-mail to advise you that we have passed on your contact details to the project that you wish to volunteer with, and you have waited 7 working days to hear back from them, but have not heard anything, please remember to let us know so that we can chase it up.

THANK YOU.

PROJECT V CLOSURE DAY This Wednesday (10th November) please note that we will be closed in order to attend the NUS (National Union of Students) and UCL (University and College Union – a staff trade union) organised ‘Fund Our Future: Stop Education Cuts’ demonstration.

We urge you to come and make history with us! This sort of thing doesn't happen every day and will be a major landmark in Higher Education history. Students from all over the UK will be coming to London so make sure your friends from other universities come and join us on our big day out in London.

Read all about the demo and how you can sign up, on the student union website: www.sussexstudent.com

That’s all for this week. Any questions, comments, concerns, just get in touch.

Michaela Rossmann and Naomi Ashman Volunteering Manager & Volunteer Placement Co-ordinator Project V, Students’ Union Activities Centre 1st Floor, Falmer House University of Sussex projectv@sussex.ac.uk www.sussexstudent.com/volunteering (01273) 873387 The aim of V-Bite is to keep you up to date with volunteering opportunities (new ones come in every week) and to let you know about anything else related to volunteering that we think you may wish to know about.

If you would like to be unsubscribed from this mailing list, please e-mail projectv@sussex.ac.uk