Widening Participation Projects

At least one committee member from your society must attend a project drop in meeting with a Volunteering Coordinator. We recommend that the students who are most involved in leading on your WP/Vol project attend this drop in. This must be attended before project delivery begins.

This drop in will cover crucial content such as Project Planning Training, Theory of Change, Data Protection, how to ensure your volunteers are DBS checked and Safeguarding Trained and completing a risk assessment. We recommend that you try to attend this Drop in before attempting the other essential steps.

To book your drop in use the link below.

Before you are permitted to start your project you must submit a high risk assessment via the Activities Dashboard which covers key areas such as data protection and safeguarding.

We recommend you attend a check in with a Coordinator prior to writing and submitting your risk assessment as, at this meeting, we will outline the best practice.

To submit your risk assessment please complete an Additional Activity Risk Assessment via the Activities Dashboard. We will aim to respond to your risk assessment within 12 working days, not including office closure days. We may request more detail be added to your risk assessment before we approve it, so keep this in mind before promising a start date for your project.

All students volunteering on your Widening Participation or Volunteering project and interacting, in any sense with under 18s or vulnerable adults must attend Safeguarding training before volunteering. This could include interaction over email, zoom any any other written or verbal interaction, as well as face to face.

It is the responsibility of the students leading on the project to ensure their volunteers complete this training before they begin volunteering.

All students volunteering on a Widening Participation or Volunteering project and interacting, in any sense (via email, Zoom, in person etc.) with under 18s or vulnerable adults must have a Disclosure and Barring Service check with a clear result.

This DBS check must be issued by either KCLSU or by King’s through an academic course, and must be no older than 3 years.

There are several steps related to data protection you and your society must take before beginning your WP/Volunteering Project.

These include ensuring that your society has a data policy and promise, and also ensuring you have created an internal Data Protection Impact Assessment before starting your project.

To find out more information, please book onto a Drop In with one of our Coordinators.

Book a check in with a coordinator

Before you start organising your project and recruiting volunteers, you should get in touch with either the Widening Participation Coordinator or the Volunteering and Fundraising Coordinator to organise a meeting. You can either book onto a Drop In session or get in touch by emailing [email protected]

Before your appointment, you should begin filling out a Theory of Change template for your project idea. Don’t worry if you don’t know the answers to all of the sections, just make sure that you have included a summary of your project, and use the prompts to get thinking about what else you might need in place.

Please also review our Volunteering Policy to find out more about how to run your Volunteering Project.

During the meeting, we will talk more about:

• Theory of Change
• Data Protection
• Completing a Risk Assessment
• DBS Checks and Safeguarding Training
• Completing an Impact Report