A group of York students has won the opportunity to have their very own I-phone application developed after winning The App Challenge final, held at the Ron Cooke Hub on Wednesday, January 18.
YUSU Welfare officer Bob Hughes has warned students to be vigilant after a student loans phishing scam has been revealed.
Her Majesty the Queen will be visiting York on Maundy Thursday, 5th April, as part of the 800th anniversary of York’s Charter for the traditional “Royal Maundy” ceremony.
A flood caused by a heating system “failure” forced the university IT services to shut down many essential systems on Sunday night, causing problems for many students on the eve of their exams and assignment due-dates.
A Group of York students have organised a Book Drive to help schools in Tanzania.
This Saturday will see the beginning of a community book drive which aims to ship approximately 25,000 books to Tanzania. At Pickfords Storage Unit, a team of students working on behalf of the charity READ International will be collecting donations of books from schools and individual donors to send to Tanzanian school children.
The project was started eight years ago by students at Nottingham University, and has now grown to encompass over 25 universities across the UK. It is run centrally, but each project is led by a team of student volunteers, who aim to reach a fundraising target of £8,000. This pays for the shipment of the books, as it costs a little over 75p to send each book to Tanzania.
If this target is reached the York team is aiming to visit the country themselves in summer to distribute the books, as their predecessors last year did.
The attraction of a trip to Tanzania at relatively little cost is a definite incentive for students to get involved with this project. As competition increases for student jobs and internships, more students are turning towards travelling during their summer, and this project demands that to go to Tanzania you must first obtain a V-award certificate to ensure you have done fifty hours of volunteering. Volunteering as a student is not solely about helping others, but it also attracts people because of how good it looks on your CV.
At the University of York charities have always had considerable interest from its student population. RAG, YUSU related charities and assorted other organisations are always well supported. Perhaps due in part to the amount of free time students have, and in part due to typical student activism, volunteering is becoming a popular way to get involved with campus life and meet people.
This charity not only works with schools and locals to collect the books, but also raises money through many fundraising events.
Scarlett Armstrong, the Fundraising leader on the project said: “Because it is a student led charity there is lots of room for creative fundraising, from the generic such as bag packing to a Naked Calendar”.
Other plans this term include cake sales, a glow stick social, and the sale of Christmas cards.
Held during half term, the probable success of the first book donation day is debateable, but the Operations leader on the team is still optimistic, saying “even if it is just a few private donors it would be great to collect some books, and it is an opportunity for the volunteers to bond and see the storage space we are working with”.
Several similar days will be held throughout the year, the aim being to attract as many donations from schools as possible, which often have suitable textbooks for the Tanzanian school syllabus.
Students will be collecting any unwanted books this Saturday at the storage unit, and discussing plans for future fundraising.
You must log in to submit a comment.
