General Notices

The UWI Student Volunteer Initiative is a pioneering project conceptualised to bridge connections among UWI students, staff, and migrant children. It stands as a facet within The UWI's Community Engagement pursuits, falling under the umbrella of 'Institutional Outreach.' This innovative endeavour involves a collaborative element, where UWI students and staff harness institutional resources and expertise to directly address a specific communal imperative. At the core of this community engagement initiative lies a dedication to empower migrant children from Spanish-speaking refugee backgrounds, a group deprived of the advantages offered by mainstream primary education systems.

Spearheaded by The UWI, St Augustine, this effort is propelled by the commitment of 40 UWI undergraduates who assumed the roles of volunteer mentors offering remedial support to 20 migrant children residing in the vicinity of The UWI, St Augustine Campus. The support extended by mentors focused on the key areas of reading comprehension, creative writing in English, and Mathematics.

 Each week, mentors diligently worked with the children, completed reflection sheets, and documented the best moments as well as the challenges encountered, and lessons learned during their respective mentoring sessions. The project ran for eight weeks in both semester one and semester two, as well as for two weeks in semester three of the academic year 2023-2024. Semester three saw the inclusion of tennis and art activities following the academic work.    

This project was coordinated by UWI Lecturers, Mr Rómulo Guédez of the Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics and Dr Nicole Roberts, of the Centre for Language Learning.

Click here to look at this video for a little more on this project.