Many University of Manchester students give their time and energy to causes that help our local communities – even in lockdown.<\/p>\n
Debbie Houghton from the University’s Volunteering Team said: “Times like this show just how important volunteers and communities coming together can be. Since the start of lockdown in the UK, over 1000 hours of remote volunteering have been completed and logged on Volunteer Hub. This has included everything from a telephone buddy scheme to support local elderly people, to adding details to community maps of the Acholi region of North Uganda. These additional hours mean that our students have completed over 50,000 hours of community-volunteering in 2019\/20!”<\/p>\n
UMPO<\/a>, University of Manchester Physics Outreach, is a student-led group of volunteers who deliver physics workshops to primary and secondary schools and take demos they designed to public events and festivals like bluedot<\/a>. The great work they do has been recognised in the Better World Awards<\/a> and the Volunteer of the Year awards<\/a>. The campus closure meant their busy spring and summer events calendar had to be cancelled, but they’ve moved online, starting the #physicsathome Twitter challenge<\/a> and running a three-day ‘what is physics’? Facebook live event.<\/p>\n Alex and Mary, two members of their 2019\/20 leadership team, told us (pre-COVID) what they get out of working with the group:<\/p>\n