WONDER Foundation highlights the importance of student volunteering

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WONDER Foundation is a women-led charity established in 2012. They aim to empower disadvantaged women and girls through access to quality education and vocational training. Working with 30 partners across 22 countries, they have provided education, mentoring and training projects for over 80,000 women. They collaborate with London-based Baytree Centre to offer 1-1 mentoring that supports women and girls in overcoming personal difficulties.

According to Olivia Darby, WONDER’s Chief Programmes Officer, the charity has worked with UCL for 10 years on a wide range of projects. Students have undertaken their master’s dissertation on topics related to WONDER’s work, which helped the charity to understand issues more deeply. One UCL student explored the importance of safe and welcoming spaces for women to learn in, enhancing WONDER’s knowledge of the positive impact of the design and provision of space.

WONDER also engages with UCL volunteers through ‘social hackathons’, a Students’ Union initiative that places volunteers with a not-for-profit organisation for one day to solve problems. In November 2022, a group of 20 students worked with WONDER to search for the contact details of different cultural communities in the UK. Their efforts contributed to a report that examined access to education for migrant girls who have recently arrived in the UK.

Jingyi Ye, a 3rd year BSc Economics student who participated in the hackathon, said she gained a sense of achievement from “making a change, even if it is little”. However, Jingyi described her task of searching for contact details as “basic research”. Olivia from WONDER agrees, but she believes that “having good brains come together to hack something creates more time for staff, which can be the most valuable thing that volunteers do”. She added that if a task seems mundane, WONDER will always explain why that work is beneficial to the women and girls they serve.

The charity does not have a hackathon coming up for UCL students as the Students’ Union did not select them for the 23/24 academic year. However, there are still research opportunities available on their website to which UCL students can directly apply. The Students’ Union is also advertising two volunteering opportunities related to communication and fundraising.