Gap year school volunteers — the strive for sustainability
Historically, gap year students have opted for voluntary posts in far flung locations. However, a combination of Covid-19, ever rising living costs and the conscious environmental effort to reduce travel has led students to seek voluntary roles closer to home in their gap year. Joining ex-teachers and working alongside them can be beneficial for both parties. The students are known to the school and their skills and abilities can mean they’re given far more autonomy within their role than they might hope to achieve on a more rigidly structured foreign gap year programme. They are also known to students and staff and provide the perfect bridge between these groups.
Jenny and Lauren have just completed a 6 month placement in our school being the Climate Action Team assistants. They joined us after a couple of years of disruption to their education as a result of covid-19 meaning that foreign gap year programmes were not easy to come by. These students were founding members of the climate action team and also had many connections within our school community.
Working with Jenny and Lauren meant that the team could suddenly become far more efficient. As the team is run as a lunchtime club, there is often little or no time to complete admin tasks such as recording registers, writing agendas and minutes, chasing emails and contacts etc. Not only did their support mean that these jobs could get done more quickly but the extra time that they had to support meant that many bigger projects have been pushed through in the last 6 months.
As well as these useful administration skills that Jenny and Lauren have developed, they have been entrusted with leading really important projects. For example, Jenny led on the project to get 108 trees planted on school site and Lauren led on project to join up with our local community farm for future projects. Both students also represented the school at our multi academy trust business breakfast and gave a talk on our work to local companies. They were subsequently asked to carry out some consultancy work for the trust in preparation for achieving the trust level target of carbon neutrality by 2035. This impressive work experience has been invaluable for them as they set out into the world of further education, employment and continued activism.
Alongside the gap year students, we have taken on 2 Duke of Edinburgh award scheme students to help run the weekly meetings as their voluntary roles. Over the last 6 months, these two year 10 students have slowly taken on more and more from the gap year students by writing agendas and minutes and chairing the meetings.
The power of these wonderful young people has meant that our ever growing and expanding team has been working more and more effectively and having more and more impact. This model of ‘work experience’ through the DofE and gap year programmes will continue, not only in our school, but across our multi-academy trust as the other secondaries have seen the value of this model and aim to employ it too. we look forward to a continuing to provide voluntary work place opportunities for students in future years allowing leadership skills to flourish among our members.
