The impact of your volunteering in STEM

As well as your employer’s or organisation’s objectives, the volunteering programme you are part of is likely to be funded to meet specific objectives too.

For example, in the UK, STEM Learning’s mission is ‘Improving lives through world-leading STEM education’. The STEM Ambassador programme is one way we do that together with the thousands of STEM Ambassador volunteers.

To help assess whether we meet our objectives, we draw upon the feedback and data provided by STEM Ambassadors. This then feeds into an independent evaluation. A recent evaluation, detailed in the Making an Impact report, demonstrated that STEM Ambassadors contribute to our mission statement and have a positive impact in four main areas:

1. Young People are better able to engage with and to continue to study STEM subject and explore STEM careers.
2. They bring back new skills and experiences to their own organisations, also raising the profile of their industry and promoting positive images of STEM at work.
3. Enhanced quality of teaching by bringing learning from business and industry into the classroom, enriching teaching and learning with current and cutting-edge STEM contexts.
4. STEM Ambassadors broaden their skill sets, gain valuable experience, improve their self-confidence and raise their profile at work.

Task

Revisit your activity planning template and the section on Focus of Feedback. Add your responses to the rows for feedback for employers and feedback for the volunteering programme.

What type of feedback might you gather and how might that provide evidence of meeting your employer’s or volunteering programme’s objectives?