The Student Volunteering Advisory Group was created in July 2007 following the merger of Student Volunteering England in to Volunteering England. It was formed from former trustees of the SVE board, half of which was made up of student volunteers.
The aim of the SVAG is to guide the work of the student volunteering team, ensuring that the team represents the views and opinions of the student volunteering sector as part of their current and future work. Furthermore, the group provides Volunteering England as a whole with a strategic view of student volunteering, in order to help us to develop our services to student volunteering members.
Meet the Chair
Mark Grayling has been the General Manager at Nottingham Trent Students Union since 2003 and will step down after four years as Chair of the Association for Managers in Students’ Unions (AMSU) this summer. After a short stint as a teacher, he worked in a variety of roles at the National Union of Students (NUS) and was then General Manager at the University of Bradford Union between 2000 and 2003. Mark recently became chair of the Student Volunteering Advisory Group at Volunteering England and is currently working on a chapter on students’ unions for the forthcoming AUA book, Beyond Bureaucracy.
To contact Mark please e-mail Mark.Grayling@su.ntu.ac.uk
WiSCV (Workers in Student Community Volunteering) representation
Steve Dale brings a Higher Education worker's perspective to the group. Since January 2004 he has been manager of the Community Volunteer Programme which promotes and co-ordinates student and staff volunteering initiatives at the University of the West of England , Bristol. In 2006 he was appointed as a trustee of Student Volunteering England and following its merger with Volunteering England, he took up a position on the SVAG. In 2005-06 he served as the Regional Reps Officer on the National Committee of Workers in Student Community Volunteering (WiSCV) and has wide experience as a volunteer both in the UK and overseas. He has previously worked as a Millennium Volunteers Co-ordinator, a sessional youth worker, and a community media facilitator.
To contact Steve please e-mail Stephen.Dale@uwe.ac.uk.
Further Education representation
Steven Kern has been the Student Union Coordinator at City and Islington College since 2006 and is a strong advocate of student volunteering within the FE sector. Steven believes that volunteering is the key to creating a positive ethos within the community and, with student support, has integrated volunteering opportunities within the College Student Union framework. 2007/8 has been a successful academic year with hundreds of students getting involved in internal volunteering, such as becoming Beat Bullying Peer Mentors, to external activities, such as clearing litter alongside the Thames. Steven is delighted to be part of the SVAG team.
For more information about WiSCV please visit the WiSCV web pages
Other group members
Russell Brooks, STAR (Student Action for Refugees)
Fiona Jamieson, Young Achivers Trust / VE Trustee
Helen Reed, Bath University Student
Manishta Sunnia, Oxford Brookes Student
Timothy Yates Barton, Peveril College Student
Dee Patel, Queen Mary's Student James J Walsh, LGBT Staff
Emma Cox, NUS Staff Stephen Brown NUS Exec (student)
Debbie Burton, Office of the Third Sector
