UCL student consultancy challenge boosts charity action towards the SDGs

A UCL volunteering project that provides charities across London with a week’s free consultancy is raising awareness of SDGs and providing solutions to tangible sustainable development challenges.

The UCL SDGs Consultancy Challenge gives undergraduate and postgraduate students from across UCL the chance to participate in a week-long group challenge in partnership with charities across London to help find sustainable solutions to real-life problems faced by their organisation.

The programme is delivered by staff from UCL Careers and UCL Students’ Union and in 2023 involved 61 students selected to support one of eight different charity partners to address problems they face that relate to the SDGs.

The charity partners included Bankside Open Spaces Trust (BOST), The Ramblers Association and the Refugee Therapy Centre. Initially, four postgraduate students acted as consultancy coordinators to work with the selected charities to produce detailed briefs for the projects.

Following a training day, the volunteer teams spent a week at the charities’ headquarters to discuss the brief and to develop solutions to their real-life challenges. Projects included developing new products and services for social enterprises, undertaking business planning and research, and designing communications strategies for fundraising and to recruit volunteers.

For example, one team carried out a sustainability audit at Marlborough Sports Garden on behalf of BOST, researching and reporting on three key elements at the gardens: facilities, usage and practice. At the Refugee Therapy Centre, a team explored ways to raise awareness of the organisation to end users, volunteers and potential funders. They also used the organisation’s own data to inform a new communications strategy.

“The consultancy challenge allows us to involve a large number of students to deliver high-impact activities and solutions that address issues relevant to our local communities.”

The challenge culminated with students presenting the findings and outcomes to charity representatives and UCL staff. Each charity was given £250 to implement the solutions proposed by the students and the student volunteering team voted as giving the most outstanding presentation was given a further £500 towards implementing their project. 

In 2022/2023, the winning project, pictured, was a team working with the Ramblers Association, which is striving to map all rights of way across England. The students set out to finish mapping the paths across all English counties and to streamline the data collected from county council websites. They also transferred it to an interactive map, making the network of paths more accessible to walkers.

“In just a short time, the consultancy challenge allows us to involve a large number of students to deliver high-impact activities and solutions that address issues relevant to our local communities,” explains Oliver Peachey, Partnerships Manager, UCL Students’ Union Volunteering Service. “Students developed invaluable skills in project management and consultancy, while finding out more and imparting knowledge about the SDGs and sustainable futures.”

In 2022–23 the challenge received a grant from the UCL Grand Challenges Pathways to Achievement (SDGs) funding call.