What are your main resposibilities as a volunteer?
So as a volunteer there was quite a lot responsibilities come from. I was in the external side of things of Nightline. So there's a lot of communication with working with lots of different societies, making sure we can promote our service the best way we can. And Aoife dealt with a lot of the internal kind of works and making sure that Nightline worked internally, as it did, and the volunteers were okay and things like that. So it's a big wide range of tasks, especially this year with with merging Nightline with the other universities too.
Why did you choose to volunteer for Glasgow Student Nightline?
So it's like there's like a three tier system, I suppose, in terms of our volunteering route. So we were, I was originally like a listening volunteer and so was anonymous and didn't let anyone know that I was listening volunteer and all volunteers aren't anonymous. And then I joined the publicity team and I wanted, I guess, just to spread awareness of the service. And I saw how passionate people were inside the service and how good volunteering was. And just getting that name across campus would have been the goal. And then from there and Aiofe and I both moved from committee into being a director side of things and that meant that like we could really kind of buckle down and make the service like the best possible way it could be. We just set our goals and try to even merge Nightlines and set ourselves from there.
What have you enjoyed most during your time as a volunteer?
I think what I've enjoyed most has definitely meeting a bunch of different people and always like just seeing the impact of the service that you're working with like across like for example, just you've just seen like a banner of what you volunteer for like as you walk past the uni or when we're at the volunteer stall at the volunteering fair and just hearing people come up and say that they've used the service before and they really appreciate like what we've put in, hearing stuff like that, it's super rewarding about doing it. And also just like I guess just the skills that you pick up, the leadership, the communication and everything that gets boiled into a pot and stirred to get the skills that you put into the volunteering. And I suppose.
How much of an impact do you feel your volunteering has made?
Yeah, I think this year there was quite a few obstacles from the start of the year. For example, Nightline started off remote only despite it being called Nightline. There was no phone line and we started off with a plan to merge the Nightlines together. And and I think making those changes and bringing back the phone line and doing these things the best that we could like made a big impact to the service itself and set things up for the future. I think excitingly about Nightline and about loads of Volunteer Services is sometimes just the existence of that service and students knowing that that service is there, even if they don't use it, knowing it's they are going to refer a friend to use the service is just as useful as someone phoning the service. It's a really nice safety net. Every single night of term there's a student with in a flat on campus ready to answer the phone and speak about anything in your mind. As a concept I think that's just really reassuring for students that it's been a tough year. So yeah, I think it's been very impactful.
What would you tell a student who is thinking about volunteering?
Go for it. I think one of my main think I would say that we have to volunteer fair as I mentioned and I was in a volunteer stall and I was looking at all the other tables and I'm like every single person was just so passionate about the volunteering they're working for, volunteer in terms of sports, volunteer in terms of like there's a lot of music opportunities, just all over the space and obviously this like a mental health service and but honestly, even if volunteering has crossed your mind once ones or even if it hasn't, you know like nipping to the freshers fair or at the volunteer fair and just having a little ramble with people saying what they do and something you know, might pull me to be involved with it. And it's been certainly worthwhile. I'd recommend it.
If you could sum up your volunteering experience in one word, what would it be?
Impactful.
I think you can genuinely see the impact and the changes that you've made to campus and when you're sitting back reflecting about how far things have come over the time that you've been volunteering or things you've picked up or experiences you've learned, or the people you've met, like I went down to like Nightline conference to meet a bunch of other volunteers and see a room full of other people that were just as passionate about something I was. It really hits you when you sit back and think about it. Like, how much of an impact you made and, and the like the resources that you can provide to the, to the campus.
Yeah, I'd say impactful.