It’s SCA week : Time to get involved!

Voluntary action and community involvement by students can be traced right the way back to the 18^th century; featuring  as a prominent component of student life in universities right across the country – certainly a far cry from popular portrayals of idle, entitled layabouts with no greater concern than the price of a treble or the next episode of Come Dine With Me. Durham University is no exception.

You may be familiar with the blue-hoodied warriors, the ubiquitous handprint and free pizzas of SCA (Student Community Action) but, pray tell, do you know what they do? The organisation has been in existence since 1989 – making it one of the most enduring features of university life – with hard-working student project leaders and student exec running a mammoth 40 voluntary projects across Durham, Queen’s Campus and the wider North-East, reaching into the surrounding towns and villages and destroying the ‘gown/town divide’ one good deed at a time.

Ranging from working with children, vulnerable adults, elderly, animals and conservation to snake handling and cheerleading, volunteering has come a long way from standing in freezing streets handing out tinfoil blankets and sifting through nightwear in charity shops.

Before I became involved with SCA, I’d carried out a DUCK internship at Durham’s Society for the Blind and Partially Sighted . I also worked in the office of a homeless charity, named DEPAUL, and been an aforementioned nightwear-sifter at St. Oswald’s myself.

Why did I do it? Because I believe that we have a duty to do whatever we can to help whoever we can without expecting anything back. I’m currently an Outreach Coordinator for SCA, so it’s my job to build relationships within the university (societies etc) and externally too – a central part of our vision for this year has been expanding ‘out of area’ and liaising more fully with the central Durham community and the towns and villages that surround it, to make sure we’re actually finding out what a community’s needs are, rather than attempting to decide it ourselves.

This, combined with the huge breadth of projects on offer, and the ability for anyone to apply to create their own, means that functionality can transcend mere benevolence, and provide some easy-access work experience for students – for example, tutoring being particularly useful for Education students – and it goes without saying that demonstrating an ability to commit to a cause and actually make a tangible difference goes a great deal further on a CV than spending three years drinking beer from a funnel.

SCA has gone HUGE this year, reaching approximately 3600 people and with over 500 active volunteers. A new feature has been the expansion of one-off events, to open up volunteering to more people and mitigate the impact of time constraints, and the fostering of more visible ‘college volunteering communities’.

The trusty team of college ambassadors have been working tirelessly to bring you a series of opportunities including giving the historic Durham gardens a facelift, holding shopping and tea parties for the elderly, and conducting a successful shoebox appeal for the Children of the North East hospitals campaign.

To coincide with national Student Volunteering Week from the 11-16^th February, SCA will be holding an ‘SCA week’, bringing you a number of volunteering opportunities including a staff-student challenge, and culminating in an evening of ‘Comedy and Cocktails’ (for those of you who went to the sell-out Jazz and Wine, this is it’s younger, sillier cousin).

SCA represent part of the often-overshadowed side of the University – the side that doesn’t wear chinos, make misogynistic comments or consider it prudent to volley themselves off cars whilst bladdered on the Bailey. We demonstrate that it is possible to gain practical, hands on experience without having to surrender your soul to investment banking or figure out how to survive in London on internships for which you’ll be paid nothing, whilst giving something back to the community you now call home.

For more information:

Email: community.action@durham.ac.uk

‘Like’ on Facebook: Student Community Action

If you’re a society or external body who’d like to get involved, email: Francesca.maddison@durham.ac.uk

If you’d like to speak to us in person, pop down to the office, situated within the Student Activity Centre, Level C of Dunelm House (Students Union)