How we raised £500 each for volunteering

Volunteering overseas gives you the opportunity to experience new cultures and meet new people whilst challenging yourself to develop and share your skills. It's your chance to contribute towards the aims and goals of one of NTUs fantastic projects and the communities you will visit. Enhancing your life experience and being part of a shared goal to help develop the global community you are part will make a great addition to your CV!

Students taking part in our International programmes have to raise money to both cover their personal cost associated with the trip, and also meet a minimum fundraising target which goes directly to the charity they are volunteering with.

The Rosie May Home is a purpose built home in Sri Lanka designed to give orphaned or abandoned girls a chance, to empower them through education, and ultimately allowing them to support themselves and their families in the future.

Lauren, one of this year’s volunteers currently in Sri Lanka, talks about her fundraising experience.

After attending the volunteer day, we all got together as a team to begin planning, some events to fundraise for the Rosie May Foundation. I think we were all feeling a bit apprehensive to begin with as raising £500 each sounded like quite a lot of money!

We all agreed that a cake sale would be one of the easiest ways to raise money so this was the first thing we did. After speaking to the student union and the library, we arranged to have two different stalls. We made sure there would two of us on each stall at all times and were each allocated two hour time slots throughout the day. We all planned to bake different things and each made at least 20, so we would have plenty of goodies to sell! We made cakes, cupcakes, brownies, cookies and flapjacks. On the day, we talked to nearly every student and member of staff who walked past, telling them all about the charity and what we would be doing when we went to Sri Lanka. Some people didn't want to buy anything from us, but after hearing about the work of the charity donated anyway, helping us to raise approximately £200!

Students selling cakes in the front of the Student Union. 

The second event we decided to do was a raffle. The first task was to find companies and businesses who were willing to donate prizes to us. I work at Chino Latino so I spoke to my manager and asked whether it would be possible for them to donate anything, and he agreed to give us a £50 voucher to be used in the restaurant. I spent a lot of time emailing different business asking for donations and googling which companies tend to donate to charities and racking my brains for local businesses who might donate! 

There were a lot of “no’s” and many who didn't reply, but we managed to get a £20 voucher for George’s Fish and Chip Kitchen, dinner for two at Handmade Burger and a free blow-dry with eyebrow threading and tinting at J’adore Hair and Beauty. I had recently attended a Mother and Daughter photo-shoot at Firefly Photography Studios and decided there would be no harm in asking for a donation, who offered us a Makeover and Modelling experience. The final two prizes were from family friends who run their own businesses and were able to donate a set of Younique make up worth £55 and a set of 6 custom design mugs. We raised around £250 from the raffle!

Prizes and information for the fundraising raffle.

Our third and final event was the ‘big one.’ We decided to do a sponsored sleep out in the middle of March – were we mad? We decided to set up camp from 7pm til 7am outside the student’s union and prayed it wouldn't rain. We laid out groundsheets and cardboard to sit on and huddled together under sleeping bags to try and keep warm 'it was freezing'. Like the cake sale, we spoke to anyone who passed by and told them all about the charity and what we would be doing. As it was a Saturday night, there were a lot of (drunk) students around who were heading out for the night and were very generous! We raised £450 on the night alongside any sponsors that were put on our Just Giving pages, which was all match funded by Santander!

Students sleeping outside the Student Union.

We want to ensure all students get equal opportunities at NTU. We understand that sometimes the cost of international volunteering can act as a barrier to some students when applying to take part, but we encourage you to apply for these opportunities as there is some financial assistance available for students from low income households.