What is the Community Outreach Add-On?
Through this exciting and dynamic Add-On (i.e. extra to and outside of your chosen academic subject), you will earn 10 community outreach hours, learn lots of valuable transferable skills, and be encouraged to use your unique gifts to make a real difference. You will be working in a team of enthusiastic, likeminded young people and supported by Reach staff to create a fundraising campaign that will impact the lives of others in a real and profound way. In many ways, it is the perfect ‘icing on the cake’ for the student seeking to inform their international awareness and consolidate their identity as a global citizen.
Student-organised charity auction!
Why should I sign up?
Students sign up for a whole host of reasons: some want to gain experience of project management and team building, some are motivated by the hours of service that they can then report back to their school and add to their CV, and some just love the idea of helping others. We usually find the students who make up our Community Outreach cohort are drawn to it for all of the above reasons, plus other personal ones which make the experience particularly appealing to them.Who/how does it help?
Reach Cambridge is proud of its excellent links with UK based charities. For the past few years, Reach Cambridge has worked with Sabre Education, a UK-based charity working in rural Ghana to build brighter futures for school children by providing new schools and training teachers. You can find out more about their work here: www.sabretrust.org. Every summer we are amazed by the Community Outreach students: their dedication and hard work encourages all of the students at our summer schools to get involved, and each year the fundraising total surpasses the year before. Last year, we raised over £5000: an incredible achievement our students could be so proud of, while knowing their efforts made a lasting impact on young lives thousands of miles away.
Ghanaian-style drumming in Cambridge city centre!
What does it involve?
The Add-On takes place outside of class time across the course, so it will not interfere with your primary study focus. Early on in our evening lecture series, we welcome a representative from SABRE who delivers a talk to all the students about the work the charity does and the inequality it addresses. This often sparks discussions in the first few Community Outreach sessions, as students explore the differences between life as a young schoolchild in rural Ghana, and their own early years of education. The students use these reflections as motivation to think of ways to achieve their goals: raising awareness of the issues facing young schoolchildren in rural Ghana, and raising money for SABRE. The Community Outreach team meets several times a week to plan fundraising activities. This might involve creative projects, such as making a short film to raise awareness, or more practical tasks, such as a sponsored silence. Students hone vital skills of communication, teamwork, project management, and even marketing, as they tell their fellow students and the residents of Cambridge about their fundraising activities and whip up support for the cause.
An original piece of artwork one of our past Community Outreach students made in response to SABRE’s work
Spinning plates is an essential life skill, after all!
