Applications Open: Apply for Empower Community Challenge 2025!

The SU Bath are delighted to announce that they are partnering with the University’s Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, the Faculty of Science and the Faculty of Engineering and Design to engage with local organisations to make a positive impact in the community, and they’d love for your charity to get involved and apply!

The faculties are encouraging small teams of Postgraduate students to volunteer their time and skills to add value to local charitable organisations by completing a ‘challenge’ set by the charity. Challenge suggestions can range from raising awareness, marketing and promotion, delivering specific events to service users, and more.

Students apply in November, and are then formed into groups of 3-4 students.  Groups will then have from January to March 2026 to complete the challenge, followed by a Celebration Event in March, which you are warmly invited to attend.

The aim of the challenge is to empower the students by developing their employability skills, such as team work, project management and communication. These valuable skills will enhance their academic studies, CVs and future careers. The challenge should also be mutually beneficial to the organisations involved by raising awareness and support amongst their large student population.

An example of the challenges that were run last year include:

Bath Cats and Dogs Home

Organise and implement a kilo sale; preventing clothes from going to landfill.

Oxfam

Stock drive campaign. The emphasis was on promoting sustainability through extending the life of unwanted garments, while further embedding Oxfam’s cause in the local community.

NSPCC

Students were invited to devise a campaign to encourage their fellow students to undertake the NSPCC’s Listen Up, Speak Up 10-minute online training, helping to keep more children and young people safe.

First Steps

To collect ideas that foster children’s connection with nature, promote sustainability, and reduce the nursery’s carbon footprint. To prepare communications that share easy tips with families on engaging children with nature at home. To create communications that help us all reduce the carbon footprint of our buildings.

Next Steps...

Please complete the linked form giving details about the challenge and the benefits for your charity or community group. You may submit as many projects as you like but each one must be on a separate form.

The application deadline is 12th of November.

The shortlisted projects will be launched to students in January and the students will have an opportunity to choose which challenge they would prefer to deliver. If more applications are received than are needed then some challenges may not get selected to go through to the final round.

The student group’s will deliver their results as part of a presentation evening during March and all charities will be invited to attend this event.

Please note, charities are asked to support the students during this challenge and therefore please consider whether you are able to dedicate some of your time and can remain contactable throughout this period.

You can get in touch via volunteers@bath.ac.uk