Open Cambridge - the University Offices - University of Cambridge

making a difference
Charity work
pays off
A worldwide movement that helps
not-for-profit organisations fulfil their
research needs inspired a group of staff
and students at Cambridge to offer their
expertise to local charities
RESEARCH TRIPS HAVE long played
an important role in developing
undergraduates’ academic skills. But five
Cambridge students studying Politics,
Psychology and Sociology have been
able to combine degree work with
helping the third sector – and stay
close to home.
The five confined their studies to
Cambridge – but they did enter a new
and sometimes disturbing world: that of
a domestic violence refuge for women.
Their plan was to research and write
evaluations of the service to aid charity
Cambridge Women’s Aid, which works to
end domestic violence against women
and children.
The students were the first
participants in Cambridge Community
Knowledge Exchange, a new University
scheme inspired by an international
movement of science shops known as
Living Knowledge (see box ‘Science
shops: a brief history’). There are more
than 100 such organisations worldwide
helping to bridge the worlds of academia
Knowledge
exchange
projects take
questions from
the voluntary
sector and
find students
and staff to do
research
*The name is a pseudonym as
Women’s Aid refuge staff do not
publicise their indentities.
and not-for-profit groups. They take
questions from the voluntary sector and
find students and staff to undertake
the research.
A great benefit
Kristina, Project Co-ordinator* at
Cambridge Women’s Aid, knew her
organisation could benefit from
knowledge exchange projects when
she read about them in the University’s
e-bulletin for the voluntary sector.
“Some people who work in the
voluntary sector might have been
apprehensive about the ability of
undergraduates to pursue research
sensitively,” she says. “But partly because
I had worked with student volunteers in
the past, I thought that they could bring a
great deal to our centre.”
Kristina had an initial meeting with
Dr Brendan Burchell from the
Department of Sociology, one of the
academics who have offered to help with
Cambridge’s Community Knowledge
Exchange. He found five students to
undertake a project as part of their
second-year studies. “It was quite
challenging ensuring that we could do
the research in time, and that we could
allow the students enough time to do
their research and write their projects to
meet course deadlines,” he says.
One area the students worked on
was the Freedom Programme, which is
run in the community and helps women
understand the dynamics of abusive
relationships, make sense of their own
experiences and help them avoid abusive
men in the future.
The students were able to draw
conclusions about how important groups
such as the Freedom Programme are to
women recovering from abuse. They also
made suggestions for improvements if
funding were available. Their work also
provided Cambridge Women’s Aid with
evidence that such a service was needed
in the region, and it has been used in
a funding bid for joint working with a
London-based project.
One student, Halliki Voolma, has
8 | september/october 2009 | UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE Newsletter