In the Volunteer Centre we have appreciated for a long time the potential and real barriers faced by different groups of students due to structural inequalities within society. We understand this to be of true of the LSE experience, along with higher education more widely, and the voluntary sector as well. In this blog we wish to explain the work we have done to understand these issues in more depth and the actions we are undertaking.

We know the power that volunteering has to add so much to a student’s journey at LSE. Students who volunteer report better well-being, a greater range of friendships, better career outcomes, a richer educational experience and it provides an opportunity to make a difference for causes which our students are passionate about. In short volunteering is a transformative tool for both communities and the volunteers themselves and we are dedicated to ensuring every LSE student can have the opportunity to volunteer.

In light of this we recruited a researcher, Abigail Tshola, in the summer of 2023 to explore these issues in more depth. The remit included:

• How do under-represented students engage with and view the Volunteer Centre?
• What could we do differently to collaborate with these students to build trust and strong relationships?
• How do these student view volunteering?
• How could we better support these students with their respective volunteering journeys?

For this project Abbie conducted a case study focused on BME (Black and Minority ethnic group) students’ experiences. She did an incredible job with this research, actively listening to the student body and providing the Volunteer Centre with a clear set of recommendations that means we can take positive steps to make our service more inclusive. Additionally, this report, along with other research, gives us some of the tools needed to educate and inform our colleagues in the wider voluntary sector about how they can engage with every LSE student regardless of their race, gender, socio-economic background, sexuality or ability. This is, of course, the right route to take ethically but at time when volunteer recruitment is ever harder it is essential that the sector looks to include everyone.

Abbie introduced us to the term ‘hidden students’ and this is what we have used as a reference point for our work. The Volunteer Centre understands ‘hidden students’ as a definitional framework and identifies where we can make institutional transformation. This definition is inspired by Nicola Rollock’s work on marginality, whereby racialised students occupy peripheral spaces within elitest higher education institutions (Rollock, 2012). As Abbie stated in her writing, being a hidden student “can related to how one’s race, gender and class identification can contribute to experiences of invisibility in the School.”

It is important to note that in our working definition being a ‘hidden student’ fundamentally includes an element of ‘opting in’ to the framework. Rather than the Volunteer Centre deciding what category a student falls into, being a ‘hidden student’ is about how the institution makes a student feel, something that only they can decide.

This is both overlapping and different from being a BME student. While many BME students may consider themselves ‘hidden students,’ not all ‘hidden students’ are BME students and not all BME students may feel hidden. Focusing on ‘hidden students’ allows us to be expansive in attending to intersectional inequalities which prevent a student from maximising the resources of the LSE, while also paying due attention to how institutions make them feel. This flexibility allows the Volunteer Centre to hold ourselves accountable for more than just the intersection of race, gender, and class, but also ability, coloniality, power, etc.

Key findings and recommendations

Abbie has written about some of the key findings from her research so we won’t repeat those here. However, we did want to share the key recommendations that she made, which we have subsequently broken up into five themes.

Information and Communication 

1. Outreach and communication that resonates with ‘hidden students’ or that increases accessibility of opportunity information
2. Honest reflections on volunteering as a BME student and how the Volunteer Centre/university/other institutions can be more collaborative with ‘hidden students’

Critical thinking about volunteering 

1. Spaces (e.g. classrooms) for critical discussions about volunteering
2. Focusing on topics such as volunteering and the role of the university and its students; discussions on how transformative volunteering is/can be

Further research 

1. Research concentrating on the specific causes BME students at the LSE are volunteering for; LSE Volunteer Centre to consider how they might further promote or support these causes
2. Further interrogate what ‘valuable’ volunteering opportunities means for students and if there are any other factors that restrict BME from accessing these opportunities
3. Conduct research situating student volunteering alongside current socioeconomic landscape

Charity partners and volunteering opportunities 

1. Developing professional schemes that are exclusively for BME students
2. Mentoring and coaching schemes specifically for BME students that are interested in volunteering

The Volunteer Centre and voluntary sector ‘tables’

1. LSE Volunteer Centre to reflect on how students see and feel about the Volunteer Centre
2. Reflection on how the Volunteer Centre (and other institutional entities such as the voluntary sector) may or may not restrict student agency

Our plans

Along with Abbie the Volunteer Centre has taken time to reflect on the recommendations made in the research and ideated about what we can do internally, what we can do in partnership and what we can advocate for more widely. We wish to make clear that the plans below are being listed for accountability and specificity. Many of the ideas are much longer in their entirety. We also wish to make clear that this is not a ‘checklist’ of actions, but new approaches for how large parts of our work will be undertaken.

Information and Communication 

1. Create a communication’s plan for charities aimed at promoting more opportunities which are impactful, both for society and students’ personal development, but are flexible and low time commitment
2. Create new webpages to document our work with ‘hidden students’ and actions for students and stakeholders to follow
3. Collaborate with under-represented student groups to share their volunteering experiences, both successes and challenges, on our blog and social media
4. Reconsider the ways in which we promote Volunteer Centre programmes to invite applications from students who may fall into the category of ‘hidden students’ (stipulating expectations on time commitment/ structure/ funding support etc. with clarity at application stage)
5. Create and share support structures for students where their volunteering relates to their lived experiences

Critical thinking about volunteering 

1. Offering seminars exploring many different aspects of volunteering/the charity sector
2. Showcasing our Student Volunteering Ambassadors and other students different lived experiences and interactions with volunteering (including those who do not volunteer)
3. Focusing on topics such as volunteering and the role of the university and its students; discussions on how transformative volunteering is/can be

Further research 

1. Research concentrating on the specific causes ‘hidden students’ at LSE are passionate about and the LSE Volunteer Centre to consider how they might further promote or support these causes
2. New researcher/graduate intern coming on in conjunction with LSE LIFE to further investigate our collaborations with ‘hidden students’
3. Further interrogate what ‘valuable’ volunteering opportunities means and if there are any other factors that restrict ‘hidden students’ from accessing these opportunities
4. Conduct research situating student volunteering alongside current socioeconomic landscape

Charity Partners and volunteering opportunities 

1. Mentoring and coaching schemes specifically for BME students that are interested in volunteering
2. Developing greater emphasis on inclusivity and flexibility of opportunities within our reach, quality, impact framework for reviewing project success
3. Collaborate with the LSESU on their BME mentoring scheme
4. Speak to LSE Careers about their mentoring opportunities and could it be widened to include volunteering
5. Speak to PAGE about Ask an Alum and could it be widened to include volunteering
6. Share best practices surrounding aspects of volunteer management and how to improve accessibility for students (For example we recently shared best practice on trauma informed volunteer management to help educate our partners on how best to manage volunteers with lived experiences of trauma).

The Volunteer Centre and voluntary sector ‘tables’

1. LSE Volunteer Centre to reflect on how students see and feel about the Volunteer Centre
2. Ongoing conversations within the Volunteer Centre – meeting every other month to revisit our ‘hidden students’ action plan
3. Develop accountability measures in communicating and documenting our progress
4. Reflection on how the Volunteer Centre (and other entities) may or may not restrict student agency
5. Collaborating with student groups, including our Student Volunteering Ambassadors, to learn more about their suggestions, ideas, and needs
6. Create a feedback space for students to safely highlight bad practices in the sector
7. Implementing new measures in our programming which reflect our findings in research and feedback
8. Training Student Led Project leaders to be aware of inclusivity and accessibility when creating projects (while this is already included, extra support and tools should be given to project leaders to help them identify with specific issues and barriers within the ‘hidden students’ conversation)
9. Both the Research Volunteering Scheme and the Community engagement Programme, our more established research-focused volunteering programmes, provide excellent opportunities to contribute to knowledge production within the charity sector. As a part of this, and depending on research findings, these opportunities may involve interrogating dominant discourses and practices within the sector surrounding, for example, power, representation, and privilege.

Next steps

We are very happy that we will be recruiting a new researcher, due to start in February 2023, who will be working with the Volunteer Centre and LSE LIFE for three months. This will allow us to carry out some of the research action points above and give us a greater understanding of what else we can do to support ‘hidden students’.

We also want to encourage all of our stakeholders to get in contact with us if you have ideas, critiques and/or suggestions. We would be delighted to work with you.

Finally, we want to make clear that this is an ongoing journey for the Volunteer Centre. We understand that we cannot end structural inequalities on our own and we recognise that our knowledge, and subsequent actions, will develop and change over time. However, we are committed to giving every student at LSE the best possible opportunity to volunteer for causes that they are passionate about.