Your Choice for Volunteering Officer: Annie Wright, Neha Sadik or Simi Lakhani?
The Volunteering Officer (BL) shall seek feedback and represent the interests of the volunteering service and be the voice of students involved in volunteering. They shall convene and coordinate with the other Volunteering Officer (Mile End) and, with the help of Students' Union staff; they will support events, training and provide general support.
Annie Wright
What's your favourite moment from being a student here?
Dressing up as a penguin to promote BL Water Polo at Fresher's fair - no embarrassment and no judgement - that's what BLSA is about.
What's something you've done that you're proud of?
Getting up at 5am to go and cook breakfast for 70 homeless people at the Whitechapel Mission when my flatmates were having a house party - am pretty proud of that.
What is a problem facing students and how do you propose to fix it?
I think one of the main problems facing students in terms of volunteering is that we don't have enough time! Our degrees are so full-on that finding time for volunteering can be pretty difficult. Luckily, there are tonnes of volunteering opportunities that are just one-offs that you can do them at a time that suits you and I would love to improve the publicity of these events so that more students know about them.
Neha Sadik
What's your favourite moment from being a student here?
Seeing schoolchildren come up with weird and wonderful backstories for their teddy's injuries in Teddy Bear Hospital clinics!
What's something you've done that you're proud of?
Taken on the role of Volunteering Editor at Circadian and contributed to the first BL magazine.
What is a problem facing students and how do you propose to fix it?
From speaking to members of the current BLSA volunteering team, engagement with volunteering societies seems to be a major issue. To fix this, I want to run long-term social media campaigns to reach all Barts students and hold regular social gatherings for volunteers to come together and form a community.
Simi Lakhani
What's your favourite moment from being a student here?
I loved Merger! It was amazing to see the Barts community rally together to support one another's sporting achievements. I particularly was especially proud of all of us working together to support DisabiliTEAM as a charity. Also winning the Merger cup against Queen Mary's was obviously a large part of Merger being my favourite moment.
What's something you've done that you're proud of?
I jumped out of a plane from 30,000 feet (with a parachute of course)! It was extremely terrifying but completely exhilarating.
What is a problem facing students and how do you propose to fix it?
Being a Barts student is stressful, with the large number of commitments everyone has! I would like to find ways of attempting to reduce this stress perhaps by encouraging the one off stress-relieving activities that the BLSA organise; this could potentially relate to volunteering. For me, personally, some of these events e.g. gardening or massages, have really helped promote calmness during stressful periods!
