Our Programmes

Aspire

We pair intermediate school students with university students in a buddy system and they visit different departments across uni for fun and interesting activities, aiming to keep the intermediate students excited about tertiary study and show them what the uni has on offer.

Global Citizens Café

Think Tiny Desk concerts meets global citizenship chat, GC Café is an intentionally cosy speaker series on topics with global relevance.

Minds Together

Like Aspire this is a buddy programme but with people with early stage dementia. Uni students are paired with a person with dementia and they go around uni visiting different departments each week followed by a sit down with kai for chats and laughs. Created in collaboration with Alzheimer’s Otago.

Reading Oasis

Each week during the semester uni students go out to a local primary school to read picture books to kids to keep their passion for reading, learning, and imagination burning.

Futureproof

Research identified a major problem for community organisations is their ageing volunteer bases. To tackle this problem we created Futureproof in collaboration with Volunteer South, where teams of tertiary students to work with community orgs and come up with ideas of how to better attract and retain young people as volunteers.

Transition Peer Mentor Programme

This programme is a new initiative that supports undergraduate students as they enter into life at Otago Uni. It's simple - University of Otago student volunteers provide peer mentoring to incoming first year students through their first semester at Uni.