Need

Student Hubs was founded by students in response to three overarching problems that remain constant across the diverse landscape of UK universities:

1) Lack of student engagement with social and environmental issues;

2) Students are unaware of opportunities available to them to make a difference;

3) Social action taken by students is highly disparate, and not as effective or sustainable as it could be.

These problems arise from a lack of resources and support for student volunteering. This is particularly highlighted if civic engagement and social action is considered in comparison to other more popular extra-curricular student activities, such as sports and the arts. Caring about and being active in the community are not mainstream student activities, and universities invest poorly in putting structures in place to promote and support them. In sharp contrast to this, American universities invest heavily in their responsibility to create future civic leaders, and in most leading American universities over 60% of students volunteer on a regular basis. This is a driving factor in the culture of philanthropy and volunteerism that is much further advanced in America.

Community need

Many of the cities in which we work have great social need. For example, despite Oxford’s elite and wealthy image, it is a divided city with areas of significant deprivation, high levels of inequality, and enduringly discrete groups of residents: locals and students. This is perhaps best demonstrated in the area of education. For whilst Oxford hosts two leading universities, many of its schools are significantly under resourced and recent research commissioned by the BBC has shown that Oxford is in the bottom five areas of England for GCSE results, coming 320th out of 324 areas.

Likewise, Southampton is the 5th most deprived Local Authority in the South East - and 55% of its 13,000 children under the age of five live within the 30% most deprived Super Output Areas in the UK. Southampton also has the two worst areas in the South East for income deprivation affecting older people.

Furthermore many of the cities we work in also face unique challenges in creating strong and cohesive communities – because of the presence of large transient student populations. The scale of this problem is best highlighted in Oxford; at the time of the last census 26% of the working age population were students – the highest proportion in England and Wales. Largely as a result of this Oxford also has the highest rate of population turnover of any English local authority area; in 2001, 25% of the population had moved within the last year.

Our work thus enables large numbers of students to develop roots in their local communities, and contribute their time and talents to those around them. This in turn will help to decrease local residents’ distrust of students, ensuring that students and non-students work together to tackle the diverse social issues that their communities face.