A group of NTU students have helped to set up an email service with the charity Action for Young Carers.
Kieran Burt, Beth Palmer, Bailey-Renique Dawkins, and Parham Rezaeipour have done this as part of their social action project for the ParliaMentors scheme.
The scheme is run to help young people for varied backgrounds at different universities develop a social action project.
The NTU Group had Conservative MP Ben Bradley for Mansfield as their mentor.
Beth Palmer, 20, studying international relations in her third year, explained the project that the group had come up with: “It is a project focusing on helping young carers within Nottingham and supporting their needs.
“We worked with the charity Action for Young Carers to discuss and investigate what the needs of young carers are at the moment, especially during the pandemic.
“The main part of our project is a mentoring service.
“Due to the way the pandemic has made things at the moment it’s done through email.
“It is a third party service, which means volunteers don’t need DBS checks unless they want to get more involved in the future.
“In the service, a young carer will email the charity with an issue like going back into education, fitting in and CV support.
“That email will be anonymised by the charity and sent on to the volunteer, who will send a response back to the charity which will be anonymised again.”
When asked why the group chose to focus on young carers, Beth said: “In our initial needs assessment, there were a couple of different issues that we looked at.
“The reason we picked young carers is because young carers are often forgotten about in society.
“They aren’t spoken about a lot – this means there’s less help out there and even though there are services like Action for Young Carers, because of how little what young carers are dealing with is publicised, the charities don’t get the same amount of support and funding as more well known charities.
“We really wanted to help raise some awareness to the issues and the struggles of young carers and to help add to the support that is there.”
Beth also described her experiences on the project, starting with why she joined ParliaMentors.
She added: “I joined the project because I wanted to help make a change in the local community.
“The main thing that drew me to the scheme was that we’d be creating our own social action project and helping the community around us.
“It’s been great to do a project like this and it’s helped me to learn how a social action project is made and what that entails.”
Beth then went on to say what she enjoyed about the project and what she found challenging.
“One of the things that has been most difficult is navigating the project in the pandemic.
“We kept having to change what are project is and what its focus is on.
“Everyone having more on their plate during this time has made it harder to navigate the group work as well.
“But we have done alright in adapting to the challenges.
“One thing that I have liked about the project is making a social action project.
“I’ve learnt about the different steps involved between starting and advertising your idea.
“Another thing I’ve learned as well is about all the different people you have to go through to get our projected approved and make sure that safeguarding is in place.”
Parham Rezaeipour, 25, studying for a master’s in project management, explained why he joined the scheme.
“The reason I joined ParliaMentors is to be involved with like-minded people to work on projects to support society.
“It also helps me to improve my project delivery skills for my course.
“It is good to meet professionals in non-profit organisations and see how they are supporting our society.
“I liked to explore the political side of things, be mentored by an MP, to see how they interact with people and what their perceptions are.”
Parham also explained how he found the scheme.
“What Ben [Ben Shapiro ParliaMentors Programme Officer] has done for us, considering the current crisis has been good.
“We have a lot of resources available and regular meetings, some introduction.
“Meeting my teammates on teams was good as well. It’s practice, how to interact with people through technology.
“I enjoyed meeting new people the most, both professionals and students.
“Due to the nature of the pandemic, people in not for profit are more focused on their primary roles.
“Students aren’t back at university, so some things are pending as well.
“It’s difficult putting things together. You have to chase people, as they have to do other jobs as well.
“Another difficult thing is team members to participate and adding value to the group.
“It’s hard to motivate yourself and them.”
By Kieran Burt