A volunteer's experience of the ReachOut Club

When I started at the LSE I knew I wanted to make the year count, to make it a memorable and rewarding year. For me this meant not only pushing myself academically, but also pushing myself personally.

I always had the itch to do charitable work with a voluntary organization, so I was delighted to attend the Volunteering Fair run by the LSE Careers Volunteer Centre in my first weeks at LSE. It was here that I found out about ReachOut—a mentoring organization working with disadvantaged communities in East London and Manchester. Being an East Londoner, I decided this was a great opportunity to scratch the itch and do something for my local community.

Soon enough I found myself at Brook Community Primary School every Friday afternoon with a group of 10 year old boys and some similarly minded volunteers. The typical afternoon session began with an enthralling game of football. It’s a great start to the session not only because the lads to get run off some nervous energy, but also because it provides an opportunity to promote teamwork, sportsmanship and fairness. It also helped to build trust and respect with the mentees—if you scored a goal you were a king. After football it was straight to the books where mentor and mentee would work through numeracy and literacy exercises together. The great thing about ReachOut is that you are paired with the same mentee throughout the duration of term. This provides the opportunity to be a positive role model and track progress together throughout the year. Finally, if the lads were well behaved, then the afternoon would end with an action-packed a game of dodgeball. This secretly became my favourite time of the week. It was like being a kid again!

Volunteering is a tremendously empowering experience. It provides an outlet to tackle some of the social challenges you read about at university head on and you see the direct impact of your effort. I can genuinely say that volunteering at ReachOut has been one of the most rewarding and enjoyable experiences of my year studying at LSE. Rewarding not only because you see the positive impact you have on your mentee, but also because it helps to build professional and friendship networks and develop new skills—all while having a lot of fun in the process. It’s also a great break from study.

But it’s not without its difficulties, and these are perhaps the most rewarding elements of the whole experience. In particular, gaining the trust and respect of your mentee is challenging and really helps to build your emotional intelligence. You have to try different techniques, be creative and really listen to your mentee. I found that my mentee had an incredibly creative side and kept talking about inventing all these different types of gadgets. I used this to anchor the value of doing the numeracy and literacy work and it provided a base on which to build his confidence. At the end of the year I received a letter from my mentee stating although I was an annoying person, he respected me. I was chuffed (I was only annoying because I made him do his work)!

So if you do have the itch to do volunteer work, or if you want to develop your personal and professional skills, then I would highly recommend you get in touch with the crew at the ReachOut! 

Chris Wajzer

ReachOut is currently recruiting volunteers to become mentors on our projects. Visit our website for more information and to sign up.