STAR Volunteering
Leeds conversation classes
There are two ways you can volunteer with STAR:
- Local university: as a student through your local STAR group at university
- National office: with the national team in London as an intern or office volunteer
Check the latest Volunteering Opportunities at the national office.
STAR Volunteering Projects
STAR groups provide practical support to refugees and asylum seekers in their communities through volunteering projects with local refugee organisations.
All STAR practical support projects are run in partnership with another organisation. This may be a local council, another charity or a community group.
Why volunteer for a STAR project?
Life as an asylum seeker in the UK can be full of loneliness, upheaval and uncertainty.
STAR members can make a positive difference to the lives of refugees by volunteering at local community centres and schools. Students can offer a friendly face at drop-in centres, help with English conversation, organise food parcels or clothes collections, run activity clubs and arrange day trips for refugee children.
In return, STAR members make new friends, learn about life as a refugee and understand why people have been forced to leave their homes.
By volunteering for local refugee projects students can support people during a difficult time and assist them to build a new life in the UK.
What volunteering do STAR groups do?
STAR groups all over the UK are making a huge difference to the lives of asylum seekers and refugees through volunteering.
Currently STAR volunteers are supporting over 40 local projects for refugees and in 2009 they supported almost 1,800 refugee and asylum seekers through their volunteering.
Current projects include:
- Homework clubs in schools and refugee organisations
- Classroom support for refugee children
- School workshops on accessing Higher Education
- English conversation classes
- Night shelters
- Drop-in centres
- Refugee Women’s groups
- Sports Clubs
- Youth Clubs
Different ways you can help refugees in your local community
1. One off events or projects
This is a great way to make a difference if your group can’t commit to regular volunteering.
For example, you could:
- Organise or help out at an event or party for a local refugee organisation
- Paint a community hall or tidy up a garden
- Do a food/clothes collection for a destitution project
- Hold a fundraising event for a local refugee project
2. Volunteering in existing projects for local organisations
For example, mentoring or befriending, helping out at a drop in or a homework club.
3. Set up your own STAR Student Led project
This is where your STAR group can take an active role in setting up and running a project in partnership with a local organisation.
- Birmingham STAR have set up a homework club in partnership project with the Birmingham SMILE project.
- Liverpool STAR run a Refugee Women and Children’s social group in partnership with a local organisation, Global Inclusion.
Get in touch with Emily Crowley for more information and advice on how to get started with you volunteering.
How can STAR National help you with your volunteering?
Download the STAR guide for Volunteer Coodinators
Leading your Volunteer Team
STAR National can help your group by:
- Find you volunteering opportunities in your local area.
- Find you a partner project to set up a STAR student led project with.
- Help you get your STAR student led project started by giving advice and support so you can;
- Set up a good partnership.
- Plan your project.
- Support the running of your volunteering project by;
- Giving advice and training e.g. how to find and keep volunteers, how to evaluate your project, how to run a student led project.
- Speak to or visit your partner organisation e.g. if you are having problems.
- Organising local training for your STAR group e.g. child protection, working with refugee children and young people.
- Being a contact point over the holidays for your partner project.
- Help you with the handover of your project.
- Organise National training events on volunteering where you can learn new skills and share your volunteering experiences with other STAR groups from around the UK.
- Put you in touch with other STAR groups who are running similar projects so you can learn from each other.
Contact Emily Crowley, Volunteering Project Coordinator, for any advice.
