Student social action: UCL Consultancy Challenge
Last Friday, Students’ Union UCL invited me to London to judge the final presentations of the UCL Consultancy Challenge. I spent the afternoon enjoying presentations about sustainability in urban gardening, social media solutions to volunteer engagement, redesigning training programmes, and designing new fundraising initiatives for charities. As their consultancy specialist judge I sat alongside senior staff from UCL and we had to decide on the winning project.
What is it?
120 students organised into 12 teams are given brief consultancy training and set to work on real problems set by charities and social organisations. They start on Monday and by Friday afternoon they have to present their solutions in a presentation to the other groups and a panel of judges.
Over 240 students applied to take part and those selected were put into mixed disciplinary groups with a range of undergraduates, postgraduate taught and postgraduate research students.
Each organisation taking part gets £250 from UCL to start implementing the solutions found by students and the winning project gets an additional £500 grant for their charity.
The student teams are supported by 4 paid postgraduate mentors who are trained by the UCL Volunteering team in consultancy. They’re involved in selecting the projects and putting the teams together. These mentors support the project teams over the week.
Students’ Union UCL budget £16,000 for the project, which covers:
Grant for each organisation involved to recognise the time and staffing commitment involved in working with the student teams (£250 x 12)
Grant for the winning organisation to implement some of the solutions suggested through the consultancy (£500)
x4 paid student staff leads (£ amount unknown)
Wrap up event with judging and drinks reception for all organisations, judges, students and staff organisers (£ amount unknown)
Who won?
It’s a cliche heard from every judging panel but choosing a winner was genuinely difficult. Not just because the projects were ace and the presentations slick, but because they were so different and difficult to judge against each other.
The Winning Team worked with Lewisham CommUNITY Space:
“With energy costs rising, The CommUNITY space has been designed to provide a warm space for those who may need it. As well as offering a warm place to catch up with friends, the CommUNITY space offers physical activity sessions, a range of food and hot drink options to takeaway and other support and resources for the community. “
The students were asked to consider the reach of the project, designing new communication methods and some social media assets. Their project outputs were great, but what really stood out was how their team connected with the client. They sensitively interviewed users of the Space and this led their work in finding solutions.
Why is the UCL Consultancy Challenge cool?
Meaningful solutions - the teams are made up of highly talented students with wide-ranging and specialist skills and knowledge. Having a professional consultancy firm doing similar work would cost thousands of ££. All of the project teams came up with realistic, costed solutions with implementation plans
Student experience - working to a brief, consultancy, team working, creating and delivering a presentation, report-writing, impact measurement. The list goes on and ranges depending on the scope of the project. In just 5 days the real-world experiences are significant
Peer learning - evaluating others’ presentations and how others’ solve problems. Working cross-disciplinary with students from different levels of academic study extends their network and gives perspectives on other ways of working. Some of the students clearly made friends through the challenge, too :)
Real community connection - some of the students really connected with the organisations they were working with and I’d guess that some will continue to volunteer with them or support the cause
Work opportunity - It wouldn’t be a surprise if some students pursue careers in the sectors they’re worked within or even looked for work at the charities themselves.
How to make it work in your SU
The project is fairly intensive for the staff to organise and shape, with a significant budget requirement. This could be scaled back to offer less opportunities for students and less organisations involved.
Identifying community partners and working with them to shape a good brief is crucial. The projects worked well as the briefs had been proposed by partners and scoped with postgraduate mentors to clarify impacts and outcomes. Having actual investment for the community partners is important too - it takes significant staff time to host the student consultants and whilst £250 won’t cover this bill, it’s a token to acknowledge the time commitment.
Briefing and training students so they have the confidence and capabilities to do a good job. It’s helpful and meaningful to the charity partners if they get actual solutions and students gain so much more out of the experience if they’re adequately prepared.
The UCL Consultancy Challenge is an example of student community consultancy and we’ve seen this happening in other institutions in different forms. They also offer ‘Social Hackathons’ and the ‘Community Research Initative’ This is working in the sector at the moment as there’s a strong civic agenda in many universities (so there’s typically a bit of cash available) and it’s meeting a student need for co-curricular activity.
If you’re interested in student social action, volunteering and civic engagement we are running a roundtable on Thursday 27th June, 15:00-16:00. More info and free tickets here.