All in a week's work for DMU Square Mile's volunteers!

Helping train people to support dementia patients, encouraging audiences to experience Chinese culture, and inspiring children to aspire to university – it is all in a week’s work for De Montfort University Leicester (DMU) students.

DMU Square Mile volunteers have spent the week working on community projects around the city and on campus.



Although it is the start of university exams, DMU Square Mile volunteers have spent the week working on community projects around the city and on campus.

Debbie Tinsley, projects and outreach co-ordinator, said: “It’s just the sort of dedication our volunteers show week in, week out in their work. Whether it’s risk assessing members of the public for type 2 diabetes or raising aspirations for local school children, our students always go the extra mile for the Square Mile.”

This week’s activities included:
•    Hosting hundreds of young people from schools in inner-city Leicester at DMU, introducing them to campus life and helping them make new friends. By making the campus an accessible, friendly space, the Square Mile aims to demystify some of the ideas young people might have about university life and encourage them to think about doing a degree when they get older.

•    Supporting DMU Confucius Institute’s Chinese event

•    Being trained by one of Britain’s only Admiral Nurses, Chris Knifton in dementia awareness to encourage staff and students to consider how they can use their skills, experience and knowledge to help raise awareness of dementia and best support people with the condition.  

•    Helping teach a lunchtime club for pupils interested in Architecture and Engineering at Lancaster Boys School, Knighton Lane East, Leicester

•    Working with LOROS Hospice on its Dying Matters campaign, with DMU nursing volunteers helping people to have conversations about death and dying

•    Volunteering at the city’s Social Media Café, which runs at Leicester Centre for integrated living (LCiL) in West End community centre

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Dying Matters saw Loros nurse Maggie Fay, practice educator, come to the Campus Centre with a chalkboard cube, on which students could write their personal aspirations or reflect on their lives.

More than 1,000 Before I Die walls have been created around the world in more than 35 languages and more than 70 countries. Maggie said: “We want to get people more comfortable talking about death, dying and bereavement because it is a taboo subject.

“We have had some good comments, some very interesting ones and here lots of students have written ambitions about learning and travelling. The pre-registration nurses were so helpful and spent the morning with us, so I could not be more pleased.”

Messages included: “Learn my dad’s language” “live my life the best I can” and ”Give every child an education”

Architecture student Ben Gibbs wrote his ambition was to go skydiving. He said: “I will be doing this in the summer, it’s something I’ve always wanted to do. I think this is a good idea, it gets you thinking.”

The cube will be in Curve Theatre on Saturday from 10am to 3pm.