Be bold about your future: challenges to challenge you and challenges for change

Find your term 3 opportunities now! You could develop your: 

• Team working skills – you may be working with people you’ve never met before, against the clock.
• Leadership skills – empower yourself to think creatively and lead the change.
• Non-academic communication skills – you could be working with a charity, or community partner where academic language needs to be left at the door. 
• Confidence in negotiating and decision-making – your team will have to agree what you’re doing. 
• Networks and connections – you could be working with a diverse group of fellow students, community experts or SMEs. 

Open to all students, but spaces are limited. Find your challenge below then follow the link to register.

Hackathons and workshops for social impact 

Social Hackathon Day, 17 May

A day of hacking! 4 parallel Social Hackathons with our gorgeous East London grassroots organisations. Want to flex your skills and form a great team with fellow students to change the world? This is your event! Party to celebrate afterwards! 
17 May 
Check it out and sign up here.

Evaluation Training for Community Consultancy, Thursdays throughout May 

Hate homelessness? Cross about the climate crisis? You can be part of generating social solutions using your research and learning skills! Join this incredible opportunity from community engagement experts Evaluation Exchange - a collaboration of academics and community leaders. 6 super interactive online and in-person sessions to explore and understand, immerse yourself, and innovate and implement solutions to real-world questions. Includes a hands-on session at a local community centre. 

Thursdays @ 10.00-12.00 throughout May, finishing on 6 June. Read more and book your spot here.  

Lightning Hack, 6 June

Are you an ideas person? Got great critical thinking skills? Be part of this ideas crowdsourcing event for local Camden charities! Join our 2-hour fast-paced Lightning Hack where you’ll be thrust into a team made up of UCL students and a non-profit Challenger Charity. Together, you’ll innovate and ideate in the early stages of problem solving. Help your charity leap forward with their important work right in UCL’s neighbourhood. 

6 June, 12.00-14.00 
Read more and book your spot here.  

Consultancy Challenge, 10-14 June

Want to really immerse yourself in a real world problem and invest some time and brain power for societal benefit? The Consultancy Challenge is a week-long event where you’ll work in a team on a problem set by a local charity experiencing a global problems – like food poverty, mental health, access to education. The pinnacle of the day is a Dragon’s Den-esque presentation party to try and win your charity £100s!!  
10-14 June, all day. 

Check it out and sign up. 

Consultancy training and skills for you and your career

The Impact of Storytelling – Free Interactive Workshop, 23 April 

Need to persuade investors to invest in your business?  Customers to buy your product? Or a company to hire you? Learn how to tell powerful stories with a free 2 hour workshop from a social entrepreneur with 15 years’ experience. By the end of the session you will have uncovered the secret to telling a brand story with a ‘heart over head’ approach that’s genuinely impactful. 

23 April , 3pm 
Find out more and sign up for this workshop 

Sci Comm Slam! 6 June 

Unlock the power of your scientific voice with this brand-new series of exciting workshops, webinars, and panel talks. We’ve pulled together some amazing professionals from the voluntary sector, the Royal Society, and Cambridge. Attend what you need - maybe you need to fill in a current gap in your skill set or perhaps this is your first time thinking about science communication so it’s all essential! Build your skills and take part in the Slam! event to put your new skills into action – with a chance to win £150!  

Events throughout May with the Slam! on 6 June.  
Read more and book your spot here.  

Build your business or social enterprise, 8 May - 26 June

Does a free 8-week programme to help you develop your business + a chance to win £3,000 sound too good to miss? 

Develop your business model and learn about the practicalities of setting up a new business or social enterprise through interactive workshops, activities and one-to-one mentoring. The programme will help you across multiple areas including: 

• identify and understand the market and industry you’ll operate in 

• identify your key assumptions and how to test and evaluate these 

• develop a viable strategy for reaching potential customers or users 

• improve your business pitching skills 
Running 8 May to 26 June 

Find out more here

Discover your entrepreneurial skills and mindset, 11 June  

Discover your entrepreneurial mindset and develop skills that will help you in your future career with this free 3 hour introductory workshop.  
 
Entrepreneurship is about more than just starting a business. An entrepreneurial mindset can help you succeed whether your future career lies in academia, working for a large-scale organisation or running your own business. In this workshop you’ll explore what entrepreneurship is, and why having an entrepreneurial mindset will help you in whatever career you choose. 
11 June 2pm 
Find out more and book.  

Enhance your employability: Free High Performance Computing Skills sessions

Develop programming skills and gain hands-on experience in High Performance Computing (HPC), Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Cloud technologies with the Advanced Research Computing (ARC) Cluster Club.  

Sessions are open to any student, regardless of computing experience or discipline and are led by ARC professionals.  HPC Clusters are used in many industries to tackle challenges, from modelling climate change to understanding pharmaceutical drug-target interactions. What challenge could you tackle with your newly-developed skills?  

First Cluster Club session on 24th April, 2.30pm with more dates planned.  

Find out more and book here; ARC Cluster Club | Advanced Research Computing - UCL – University College London 

Information literacy for life: assignments, your final year project, employability, the workplace, and lifelong learning. 1-24 May

Information literacy (IL) skills you build at university for academic library research are fundamental to navigate and benefit from the digital environment beyond university. Developing these transferable skills are key to enhancing your employability, enabling you to perform effectively in the workplace, support your independent lifelong learning, and contribute to your graduate success.

By undertaking this blended learning challenge, you will develop essential information literacy skills to help you succeed in your assignments or final year project and understand how those skills translate to skills for employability, the workplace and life.

Access the challenge at the following link from 1 May 2024: Information literacy for life: assignments, your final year project, employability, the workplace, and lifelong learning

 

This challenge runs from Wednesday 1^st May to Friday 7^th June and includes self-paced online learning and optional live online or face to face training sessions on various dates throughout the period. It will take approximately 4.5 to 6.5 hours in total to complete, depending on the options you select.