A total of 115 people attended the evening event, including staff and students and 20 representatives from local charities and council-affiliated organisations which have engaged with UWL students this year. These include Gunnersbury Park Museum, Pepper Pot Centre, Boston Manor House, Age UK, Ealing RISE, Macmillan Cancer Trust and Hounslow FoodBox.

These volunteering partners from across Ealing, Hounslow and west London met with UWL staff, schools and students discussing volunteering opportunities linked to UWL’s courses in areas including health care, sustainability, digital, culture and heritage, and outreach to support poverty reduction.

This academic year saw 92 partnerships with local organisations. In total, 3,732 hours were spent volunteering across the year. Most of this figure, 2,355 hours, was for external volunteering with partners, with the rest made up of 872 hours on Students’ Union volunteering, 459 hours for UWL volunteering and 253 hours on Peer Mentoring.

Overall, nine awards were presented, with Nii Okain Nunoo from the School of Computing and Engineering named Peer Mentor of the Year and Sacha Phoenix Alexander from the School of Human and Social Sciences (SHSS) winning Sustainability Volunteer of the Year. SHSS was also named School/College of the Year in recognition of more than 800 hours of volunteering by its students.

Digital Volunteer of the Year was Sukhman Kaur from Claude Littner Business School (CLBS) while fellow CLBS student Keerat Sandhu received the Volunteering Spirit Award. A third CLBS student, Sergii Savytskyi, was named Student Volunteer of the Year. Sergii demonstrated exceptional commitment to supporting Ukrainian families currently in the UK, organising visits to Brentford FC stadium to meet the players, fundraising more than £100,000 and aiding the purchase of laptops for 2,000 children in eastern Ukraine.

Saeed Warsame from the London School of Film Media and Design was named Community Volunteer of the Year and Edward Devey from the London College of Music was awarded the Culture & Heritage Volunteer of the Year award.

Finally, the Volunteering Organisation of the Year was presented to Pepper Pot Centre – a day centre for elders from the African Caribbean and other communities in west London. The Centre organised events where UWL students supported people at risk of dementia or living in isolation, including celebrating Grenada Independence Day and offering Christmas Dinner, with students preparing hundreds of meals and engaging in crafts, arts and storytelling.

We are very proud of UWL’s vibrant and dynamic volunteering partnerships. Not only are our students supporting and enriching the work of key organisations locally, they are also developing life skills and benefiting from a range of different challenges and interactions. Well done all!”

said UWL Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Education and Student Experience) Sara Raybould.

• Find out more about volunteering at UWL