Volunteering in colleges
Introduction
AoC Sport values the considerable contribution of volunteers in supporting and delivering
activities in colleges and in the communities which they serve. We recognise that this
voluntary contribution is not only through sports students delivering activities but also
students from other curriculum areas who can support community clubs through a variety of
roles from maintaining and developing facilities to help with social media and marketing.
For colleges, volunteering provides their students with the valuable opportunity to develop
the skills that employers require whilst putting into practice some of the knowledge they have
developed on their course. From our college sport survey we know that 25,000 regularly
volunteer in sport programmes at college and that 49% of colleges have volunteer student
management team to drive college sport.
AoC Sport’s role is to support colleges to establish and deliver high-quality
leadership and development programmes to their own students.
We will provide specific volunteering opportunities for discrete events and
campaigns.
We will work with a number of key partners to promote existing programmes within
colleges eg Step up to Serve and #iwill, Join in, The Duke of Edinburgh’s Award and
vinspired
Volunteering in Sport
As reported in the 2016 Sport England review into the Motivations of Sport Volunteers in
England the 2012–13 Active People Survey (APS) reports that 12% of British adults
volunteered for sport, down from 14% in 2011–12 and 13.6% in 2010–11. This is consistent
with the findings of Low, Butt, et al. (2007) who draw on 2005 Citizenship Survey data to
show that 13% of British adults volunteer in sport, a number which makes up 22% of the
total volunteer population. This makes sport the third most popular area for volunteers to
engage in, only education and religious volunteering are more popular. The review goes on
to reveal that young people, aged 16 to 25-years-old and the ‘middle-aged’, 35 to 49-years
old are the most active in formal volunteering. The 2015 Community Life Survey shows 47%
of young people and 50% of those in middle age formally volunteered in the last year.
Volunteering in colleges
There are many excellent and varied examples of volunteering programmes in colleges.
College students choose to volunteer for a number of reasons. Some students see
volunteering as an opportunity to develop their employability skills. Programmes such as
Manchester College’s Enhancing Student Employability Scheme (ESEP) use skill
development and employability to engage students in volunteering. The focus on developing
employability skills has helped to embed the programme across the college with support
from senior management.
Queen Elizabeth Sixth Form College in Darlington has developed a Student Management
Team for sport. The Team is firmly established in the College, giving students a voice and
involvement in the planning, strategy, organisation and running of all sport and physical
activity in the college and local schools.. Whilst the experience is excellent for the young
people involved, the outreach work in local schools provides the college with great exposure
to prospective students.
Bridgwater College deliver a similar Student Management Team in partnership with
Somerset Activity Sports Partnership and Somerset FA. The sustainability of the
programme is enhanced as second year students mentor first years which enables them to
share their knowledge and experience.
Other students choose to volunteer simply because of their passion for a particular sport. For
these students their volunteer journey will often start as a participant. Some students will
volunteer as part of the qualification they are undertaking at colleges, many of which contain
a requirement for a minimum number of voluntary hours. The challenge with these students
is to keep them engaged in volunteering once they have reached their target number of
hours.
Social action is increasingly a motivation for students, to give something back by
campaigning, fundraising and volunteering to create a social change. The outcome may be
to create sport and physical activity opportunities for disadvantaged people but the driver
may stem from a desire to improve their communities.
A number of colleges have embraced the National Citizen Service (NCS) to embed
volunteering and social action into the lives of their students. The programme entails four
elements starting with an outdoor activity adventure residential. The discovery stage involves
finding out about where you live and connection with community and business leaders. The
next stage is about the students implementing the skills they have developed and planning
and delivering a social action project, this is often in the form of sport and physical activity.
Finally the students are rewarded and recognised for their achievements. The service is
recognised by UCAS and it is recommended that students include NCS in their personal
statements.
What is the current landscape?
At present the volunteering offer for students and the wider population is supported by a
myriad of organisations. Whilst this offers a number of positives it also creates difficulties in
identifying the right organisation to support a volunteer or an organisation looking to recruit
volunteers.
Join In is the national brand for local sports volunteering. The Join in programme is
managed by the Sport and Recreation Alliance. Their role is to support sports clubs and
groups to engage volunteers. They do this is three ways:
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Supporting the sports clubs and groups.
Promoting opportunities for people to volunteer in their local communities and at
sporting events.
Recognising the huge social value created by volunteers through campaigns.
Join In matches people to volunteering opportunities at clubs in their areas. The programme
also offers support and resources to clubs to ensure that they are able to not only recruit but
also train and support the development of their volunteers.
Step up to serve is coordinating the #iwill social action campaign. The campaign aims to
grow the number of young people between the ages of 10 and 20 in social action. The #iwill
campaign strategy is based on collaborating with stakeholders from across a wide range of
sectors. By making an #iwill pledge organisations are committing themselves to embed
social action into the lives of young people.
The National Youth Social Action Survey 2017 commissioned by Step Up To Serve and the
Office for Civil Society demonstrated the influence of education establishments on social
action and volunteering. 69% of 10 to 20-year-olds got involved through their school, college
or University. It also showed that 44% of 16 to 20-year-olds had participated in meaningful
social action over the last 12 months.
Vinspired is a volunteering charity for 14-25 year olds. It offers similar functions to Join In
and Do-it.org by advertising volunteering opportunities. An additional benefit is their support
for young people to develop their CV’s to ensure that volunteers are able to demonstrate the
skills they develop whilst volunteering.
Sport England’s strategy Volunteering In an Active Nation has outlined their commitment to
revolutionise volunteering be creating new opportunities and improving the volunteer
experience. A key focus of the strategy is to increase the number of volunteers from
underrepresented groups by working with new partners to develop a more diverse audience.
Volunteer Development is one of the core services offered by County Sport Partnerships
(CSP). They work strategically with national partners, including Join In and Sport England, to
strengthen the volunteer offer at a national, regional and local level to help the recruitment,
retention and deployment of volunteers. Colleges often work with CSPs to provide a student
volunteer workforce for level two and three of the School Games.
Current AoC Sport opportunities
AoC Sport ECFA Activators programme has achieved some incredible results and has
demonstrated the dual benefit recognised in Sport England’s volunteering strategy. The
volunteer activators have developed important employability skills whilst the colleges have
been able to develop their football offer through extra capacity.
We have recently recruited and trained 66 This Girl Can Ambassadors to promote local This
Girl Can activities, both in college and the community, to other students in their colleges,
particularly those that are currently inactive.
The annual National Championships is supported by a volunteer workforce team, recruited
through an open process. This provides around 50 college and university students the
opportunity to be involved in multi event high profile competition.
We have delivered a number of volunteering workshops as part of our training and
development programme for Active College staff. This training has focussed on supporting
Active College funded staff to set up a Student Management Team to provide additional
capacity.
Barriers to participation in volunteering
Colleges have received significant investment into workforce through Sport England’s Active
Colleges fund. In many cases volunteering programmes have been developed to support
programme delivery. As this funding stream comes to end some colleges will no longer
have the resource to develop and maintain volunteer programmes in sport.
The National Youth Social Action Survey states the most common reason given for not
participating in social action by potential respondents (interested or uncertain) is ‘I don’t have
enough time’ (29%), which was also the most common reason given in 2015. A higher
proportion of potential young people this year have reported they didn’t know how to get
involved/no one has asked them (27% in 2016 compared to 18% in 2015), suggesting that
potential participants would like to be involved but are not sure of the routes in. This
coincides with fewer potential reporting it had never occurred to them to participate in social
action compared to 2015 (17% and 29% respectively).The recognition that young people are
open to volunteering but are unsure of how t go about it is understandable given the
complexity of organisations involved.
What will AoC Sport do to embed volunteering and social action in colleges?
Advocacy - Senior leaders in colleges have a role to play in embedding social action and
volunteering in their colleges and across the FE sector. AoC Sport will influence senior
management through networks coordinated by AoC. AoC Sport will pledge support to the
#iwill campaign and promote the pledge widely.
Transition - Youth Sport Trust delivers a highly successful volunteering and leadership
programme in schools but the transition between school and colleges and then into HE leads
to a drop off in volunteering. AoC Sport will work with YST and BUCS to minimise the
impact of transition between settings.
Signposting – We will work with our partners to develop a clear volunteering offer for
students throughout their journey in education to reduce the chances of drop out. We will
signpost colleges and students to the most appropriate resources.
Research – Evidence is available to demonstrate the impact of volunteering on students but
we want to demonstrate the impact on college’s key performance indicators and student
outcomes such as attendance and achievement. It is widely acknowledged that volunteers
will develop a number of desirable employability skills these are not always easily
identifiable. We can develop this through research to help colleges and students highlight
these skills.
Provide high quality opportunities – We will continue to provide opportunities for college
students to support AoC Sport events and campaigns.
Share success – We will promote successful volunteering programmes and student
experiences throughout and beyond the sector.