We enjoyed celebrating International Volunteer Day on 5 December 2021 and recognising all the meaningful ways our global alumni and supporters contribute to the success of Durham University and its community of staff, students, alumni and friends. We're eternally grateful to all our volunteers who generously give back their time to undertake a variety of important roles such as sharing career insights and advice with current students, talking to prospective students about what studying at Durham is really like and running Alumni Chapters to name a few!
Our alumni and supporter community also positively affect people and communities all around the world through volunteering. Naomi Green (Liberal Arts, St Cuthbert’s Society, 2017-21), founder of Learning by Heart, tells us why she’s passionate about volunteering and how her experiences as a student led her to launching her own charity to provide education internationally.
Naomi first started volunteering when she was 15 years old and realised that donating your time can make a real difference to someone else’s life, confidence and fulfilment. Fast forward a few years, Naomi started looking at Universities and knew that she wanted to study somewhere that had a good volunteering programme so that she could continue her volunteering efforts as a student.
She applied to Durham University and began her Liberal Arts course in 2017. She loved the multitude of opportunities and activities available to students at Durham and really enjoyed meeting new people from a range of different backgrounds. Naomi started volunteering with Durham University Student Volunteering and Outreach (DUSVO) in her first year. DUSVO has over 40 student-led and community-focused projects that offer students the chance to learn new skills and to make a positive impact. Naomi was involved in a number of projects, namely Children Achieving Through Student Support (CATSS), which she continued until graduation. CATSS is a Children in Need funded project that provides respite care and new opportunities to socially at risk children in the North East. Volunteering on the project, Naomi learned the difference individual attention and support can make to a child, which helped inspire current project Learning By Heart. Naomi was also part of the student executive committee in her final year and led on the coordination of events, awards and fundraising.
As well as volunteering at Durham, Naomi’s drive to donate her time to help others continued in Buenos Aires in Argentina during her year abroad as part of her degree course. Naomi volunteered at social enterprise Delicias de Alicia, in which a vegetarian restaurant and catering service funds free cooking and nutrition workshops delivered to children in low income areas. This experience, along with time spent volunteering with CATSS, inspired Naomi to start her own organisation that would make educational more accessible for all, with a fundraising aspect incorporated. Learning by Heart was founded in 2020 as a non-profit organisation of volunteer tutors who provide pay-as-you-feel online teaching to pupils in the UK which fundraises for international educational charities, CAMFED (the Campaign for Female Education) and Education Cannot Wait.
Learning by Heart has two principal goals: to provide children and adults in the UK with the educational support they need and also to improve access to education for young people across the world. To date, Learning By Heart has raised upwards of £3000 for the charities it supports, and received consistently positive feedback from service users. One parent wrote to the organisation to thank them for the service being a ‘god-send’ to their family amidst the backdrop of the pandemic and with both themselves and their partner being out of work. During the first lockdowns, Learning By Heart in some cases even replaced school entirely for pupils like one boy who struggled to return to school in person due to Covid-anxiety. The value of the service LBH provides is clear in the ceaseless demand for classes- Naomi explains that despite multiple new tutor signups in past month, there remains a waiting list for almost every subject offered by the project.
Naomi has big dreams for Learning By Heart, which is currently undergoing charity registration. Having worked previously with companies such as Deloitte, Naomi hopes to partner with universities and businesses to deliver smaller, spin-off projects, and offer corporate language classes as an additional means of fundraising- which will help cover running costs such as tutor DBS checks, safeguarding training, website costs and advertising of the service. One day, she envisions opening an office in Bristol, near her home in the South West.
Since graduating, and in addition to running Learning by Heart, Naomi has worked at Durham University as a Staff Volunteering Administrator and more recently as Sustainability Coordinator. In her current role, Naomi works as part of Energy & Sustainability Team at the University, focusing on student and staff engagement and communications.
To find out more about Learning by Heart, and how you can get involved and support the organisation by donating your time and money, visit their website at https://www.learningbyheart.info/
We enjoy keeping in touch with our alumni and supporters after graduation and hearing about life after Durham. If you have a story you would like to share with us, or you’re interested in volunteering with us here in Durham, we’d love to hear from you!