Students find the perfect match
FROM fostering kittens to playing board games with the elderly, a threeday ‘‘Voluntinder’’ initiative is matching Otago student volunteers to community activities.
This is the second year Voluntinder has been held to mark National Student Volunteer Week at the University of Otago.
If students see somewhere they want to volunteer, they put a green heart in an envelope beneath its profile in the University Union Building, with their details on it.
The event is organised by volunteer group UniCrew, and a variety of charities and community groups are taking part.
UniCrew relationships manager and law and politics student Natasha Cox is planning to volunteer creating a community garden at Brockville Kindergarten.
Through volunteer work, students met people they otherwise would not have met and made connections and friendships, as well as gaining work experience, she said.
More than 3900 students were already on UniCrew’s database.
‘‘From my experience, the conservation [organisations] are really popular, and everything involving animals,’’ Ms Cox said.
‘‘It doesn’t really matter what you are studying.’’
Mentoring roles also drew a lot of interest, Ms Cox said.
Volunteering in different places could make students think about what they really wanted to do after university, as well as giving them new skills, she said.
They could decide if they wanted a ‘‘longterm relationship’’ with an organisation or a brief stint volunteering.
‘‘Kindness cookies’’, where people got a homemade cookie and kindness task to carry out, would also be distributed by UniCrew during the week, Ms Cox said.
A planting day at Tomahawk was on next weekend, and a beach cleanup at St Kilda had also been organised. Events were also being run by student mental health support group Silverline.