Our UWA student community is packed with great clubs and initiatives, running everything from teaching initiatives and mentoring support programs to fun and flirty theatre plays!
Showcasing some of the best outreach achievements and events of this year, it’s clear our UWA students are something special and have generated some fantastic community impact over the last year. If you want to get involved, help out or re-connect with your former club alumni, contact [email protected].
AIESEC in UWA
AIESEC is a global, independent, not-for-profit youth-run organisation, engaging and developing youth to create a better future for themselves, their communities, and therefore, the world.
In 2021 semester one, AIESEC in UWA has engaged in multiple flagship initiatives: Global Village, World's Greatest Lesson, Youth to Business Forum, and a case competition with Bankwest. These initiatives encouraged UWA students to not only experience diversity in our community through a showcasing of different cultures, but also raise awareness of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, and finally, attend platforms that bridge the gap between Australian Youth and WA’s corporate industry.
This semester, we have more ambitious plans which include running our biggest flagship event to date, the "Youth Speak Forum”, in collaboration with committee, NGO and business partners in WA. Youth Speak aims to give young people a platform to voice their opinion, turn it into real actions and bring them to the table of discussion and implementation of these solutions.
Leo Wu
Committee President
Guild Volunteering
Partnering with over 320 change-making organisations, UWA Guild Volunteering connects students to volunteer in their area of interest. Among the most popular areas of interest are those within education and youth, environment, health and skill-based volunteering – and the Guild is here to support them to find a perfect role in their selected area.
Our new campaign, Winter Volidays was created to generate maximum community impact during the winter break.
“Over a six-week period, over 200 UWA students volunteered 759 hours with 18 different not-for-profit organisations. All together, they planted 800 trees, collected 8 bags of marine debris and sorted 16 pallets of donated goods!”
Empowering students to grow their volunteering role and take on initiatives, we aim to increase the programs on offer and grow community impact alongside student leadership skills.
Marcus Jih Jie Lim
UWA Guild Volunteering Chair
Palestinian Cultural Society (PCSUWA)
The Palestinian Cultural Society of UWA (PCSUWA) is a club for all; we love sharing Palestinian culture with anyone and everyone!
Focusing on community outreach, we aim to raise awareness about Palestinian culture and ensure it is recognised within the UWA community. We work with external organisations such as Human Appeal, as well as other Guilds within WA to foster the community.
We’ve held many events, starting with O-Day followed by a Sundowner with our own Palestinian twist: sausages and hummus! We participated in Global Village, where we offered free Mana’eesh, a Middle Eastern version of pizza, and took part in UWA’s very first Night Markets at the Grove, organised by our Vice-President, where we sold delicious chicken skewers and sweet Palestinian dessert Warbaat, every sugar junkie's addiction.
Recently we hosted our first Dabke night, which involved teaching attendees traditional folklore dancing accompanied by some delicious Palestinian food. We wrapped it with an impactful Photo Exhibition, showcasing the Palestinian struggle, an important aspect of the Palestinian identity. Follow our socials for our upcoming events, we have a load of them!
Buthaina Al-Dulimi and Adam Elyousef
PCSUWA President and PCSUWA Vice-President & Guild Councillor (respectively)
UWA Pantomime Society
The UWA Pantomime Society aims to put on three shows a year, with our first two occurring during semester aimed at a student audience, with a child-friendly third during Christmas, raising funds for charity.
We are also available to perform at outside events in the wider Perth community and look to work with other theatre groups around Perth, including Modicum at Murdoch University. We performed as part of the 2021 Fringe Festival with a sold-out season of our show “Sex Toy Story”. As this was our first time performing as part of the Fringe Festival, we are incredibly proud of all our members who were involved in the show.
We also staged our original written musical “Legally Bond” in June. Thanks to the support shown to us from our community, this has been our most successful show in the club’s history!
We want to continue our reputation of being an inclusive and safe space for all people by giving our members more chances to spend time with one another, helped along with our fabulous new clubroom.
Clare Boon
UWA Pantomime Society President
Ignite Mentoring
Ignite Mentoring is a student-run not-for-profit organisation which runs mentoring programs at high schools around Perth. Aiming to improve self-confidence in students by fostering an environment in which they feel valued, capable, and heard, we run 3 programs; Resilience, Careers and English as a Second Language Programs at Balga SHS, Morley SHS, Thornlie SHS, Kiara College and Southern River College.
Running over 9 weeks each semester, our programs have around 170 volunteers from UWA, Curtin, Murdoch, Notre Dame and ECU. Volunteers mentor the same students each week, aiming to build a strong mentor-mentee relationship, develop their self-esteem and help facilitate a positive relationship with school, their peers and teachers.
Our programs provide an opportunity for students to practice soft skills, broaden and improve their understandings of available future pathways and foster a growth mindset. Alongside our programs, we run an excursion where we bring students from one of our schools to UWA to showcase the possibilities after secondary education. Looking ahead, we hope to provide our programs in more schools around Perth and continually improve our programs to provide the most valuable and empowering experience for our students.
Emily Hoare
Ignite Mentoring President
Teach Learn Grow
Teach Learn Grow believes that every child should have the opportunity to access quality education and mentoring. Through our eMentor and Rural Programs, Teach Learn Grow aims to help bridge the education gap between rural/remote students and their metropolitan peers.
“In semester 1, Teach Learn Grow was able to send over 350 volunteers to 30 different schools across Western Australia, spanning from Esperance to Wyndham to help tutor primary school kids one-on-one for a week. Additionally, TLG endeavours to continue this work through online mentoring (eMentor) during the school term with 6 different schools.”
As a university club, we run info nights and stalls, fundraise for TLG through events like waffle stands and engage current, past, and future volunteers. Going forward, we would love to increase our presence on campus and continue to promote the importance of bridging the education gap. Sign up to one of our programs and I hope to see you at one of our upcoming events or stalls!
Anji Ponnampalam
President of TLGxUWA
TEDxUWA
TEDxUWA is a student-run, non-profit organisation based at The University of Western Australia. We aim to bring the spirit of TED to the UWA community by organising events that focus on the power of ideas that spark change.
To achieve this, we aim to run at least 4 ideas-focused events per year, consisting of 3 small-scale ‘TEDxUWASalon’ events, accommodating approximately 100 attendees each, and a large-scale conference of approximately 300+ attendees towards the end of the year.
In 2021 thus far, we have run an arts-focused salon, TEDxUWASalon: Blank Canvas, and a STEAM and education-based salon, TEDxUWASalon: Symbiosis. Our biggest achievements include TED publishing Jessica Kerr’s talk from our 2020 conference on the TED website, being declared Semi-Finalists in the Western Australia Young Achievers Awards in 2021 and receiving over 886,000 views on YouTube on Lacey Filipich’s talk from our 2018 conference.
Going forward, we aim to run larger events at a reasonable cost, fostering the spread of good ideas through providing a unique platform for UWA students, staff, alumni and the greater public, in order to create a synergy of ideas between different faculties and people.
Buvaness Perumal
Secretary TEDxUWA
Eight Ball Club
Running weekly all-inclusive events, the Eight Ball Club works closely with the good people at the UWA Tavern to create an entertaining night each Wednesday evening for students to come together and meet new people.
With members of all pool abilities, we welcome those new to the game while embracing our members’ competitive spirit with tournaments throughout the year. Last semester, we ran two successful tournaments, one in Fringe week and one during the UWA Welfare Week, in conjunction with the UWA Fringe Committee and the Welfare Department respectively. With attendees from all walks of life, whether a student, alumni or simple pool enthusiast, we have a thriving community at our events and weekly meet-ups.
2021 has already been a fantastic year for us, and I’m very excited about the future of the Eight Ball Club.
Daniel Walker
President of the Eight Ball Club
Students for Refugees
Students for Refugees is a student-run, non-political, and non-for-profit organisation that stands as UWA’s voice for refugee and asylum seeker rights. We focus everything we do around our three dimensions of Advocacy, Community, and Education to create a space where we can educate, interact, and volunteer with those in the refugee community and with other humanitarian organisations.
In January, we ran a mentoring program named Thrive Together with ASeTTS (Association for Services to Torture and Trauma Survivors) in which we mentored children of refugee background in developing healthy habits, managing time and stress, and many other soft skills. We took the young students to UWA and toured them around campus, and it was incredible to see their newly formed enthusiasm for attending University.
Our upcoming initiatives involve collaborating with UWA Guild Volunteering and ASeTTS in our Building Bridges project, in which we will mentor children of refugee background on topics such as mental health, youth empowerment and youth leadership throughout multiple full-day programs.
Other events that we have coming up involve a plethora of food drives, bake sales, and many more, so get involved with us!
Sohail Kharrazi
Vice President of Students for Refugees