More than ten local charities are set to benefit from a share of £15,000 fundraised by students at the University of Bath’s Students’ Union.
The Rainbow Centre for Children, Time2Share, Golden Oldies and Julian House will each receive £2,000 and a further seven smaller charities will receive grants of £300.
The money was raised by students over the past year through activities including a sleepout for Julian House, RAG (Raising & Giving) Week, the Fashion@Bath show, and a sponsored hitch-hike to Paris.
In the past year students have given over 3,000 hours of volunteering time to more than 20 local organisations and raised over £100,000.
It’s been such a successful year of fundraising that the RAG Committee has also been able to give £500 to the Mayor of Bath’s Relief Fund and £1,000 to Threeways school for children with special needs, to support their Enterprise Shop and Café.
The city’s firework display, organised jointly with the Bath Rotary Club, also raised £10,000 to buy new monitoring equipment for the Royal United Hospital’s Accident & Emergency Department.
Hanna Wade, a final year student who is chair of Students’ Union RAG, said: “It’s been fantastic for RAG to have had such a successful year, raising a fantastic sum of money and with more students than ever wanting to be involved with volunteering on a weekly basis.
It’s especially rewarding for everyone involved to see that their hard work and dedication is really making a difference to local charities and is giving something valuable back to the community which we are living in.”
The cheques were presented to the charities at a Volunteer Celebration Evening held at the University on Monday 23 April, attended by the City’s Mayor and Chair of Council.