Our “residency” at City University this month was worthwhile as we reached students in need, and students who will spread our ethos.
We had some really important learning that will inform how we work with universities going forward:
- There is so much broken stuff everywhere! While universities provide basic software IT support, they don’t have the capacity to assist with hardware and more complicated stuff. A support engineer told us they wish they could refer students to daily Restart activities.
- Students actually have lots of patience to sit down, get stuck in, and well, learn! We had a number of students stay for 3-4 hours.
- Students also REALLY value saving money – not a surprise, but we thought we might actually put a number on the money saved in our reporting.
- Finding potential Restart event organisers or hosts is just as hard at a university as it is in the wider world! We need to work much more through existing networks, classes and word of mouth.
- Recruiting London university students as volunteers into our growing London pool of Restarters is probably the most realistic and mutually beneficial outcome. In future, beyond green projects and the Student Union, we’ll be looking to link with the Volunteer Offices on campuses.
If you are at a university and would like to host us, please get in touch!
Here are the numbers: