Committee on Community Activities: Notice

The Annual Report for 2003-04 of the Committee on Community Activities is available from Penny Wilson, Community Relations Co-ordinator (tel. 01223 765490, e-mail pw271@cam.ac.uk). The Committee on Community Activities aims to ensure that the University is engaged with the community in a responsible, relevant, and sustainable way. One of the Committee's main activities is to allocate grants from the University's Active Community Fund, which is funded by the HEFCE. In the first two years of the Active Community Fund, the Committee has:

• made 107 grants
• supported 79 organizations, who have used their grants to reach over 19,000 beneficiaries
• involved 2,500 volunteers from the University.

Through the Active Community Fund, the Committee on Community Activities has supported Departments, Colleges, and student organizations to extend community outreach and volunteering across the University, for example, through a Community Sports project (http://www.sport.cam.ac.uk/community/), a volunteering in University Museums project (http://www.cam.ac.uk/cambuniv/libmuseums/volunteering.html), and an Outreach Officer in the Department of Engineering (http://www.eng.cam.ac.uk/outreach/).

Last year, the Committee on Community Activities surveyed Colleges, Departments, and student societies on their charitable and community activities. The survey found that:

• nearly 8,000 staff and students are involved in community partnerships run at the University
• these staff and students invested over 200,000 hours of paid and voluntary time, worth almost £3,000,000 to the community
• nearly 500,000 individuals and 4,000 organizations directly benefit from such activities.

The Community Engagement Report 2003-04 is available from Penny Wilson (details above) or online at http://www.clo.cam.ac.uk/community/index.html.