Volunteering at Xaar
Hear from our volunteers
We support volunteering here at Xaar and offer you time off to volunteer. This will help you to get involved in your community and additionally assist you to develop new skills and hone existing ones. With this in mind, we’ll support your voluntary work/activities by providing ‘holiday matching’ of up to two and a half days a year, enabling you to spend up to 5 days per year volunteering.
Name: Andy Smith
Type of volunteering: I volunteer as one of the team of newly trained beekeepers who look after our Xaar Bees.
Why: The bees were introduced to the Huntingdon site as part of our commitment to enhancing local biodiversity, we have 2 hives and the group of volunteers are being trained to look after them on a rota basis. I thought this would be an interesting and fulfilling opportunity as I am hoping to carry this on eventually at home in the future. it was something we liked to do as a family when my children were younger.
Name: Helen Kirby
Type of volunteering: STEM Ambassador activities: Dedicated to improving young people’s learning, future education and career opportunities (primary and secondary students) via the STEM disciplines of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics in an interactive and real world approach linked to the school curriculum.
- Currently I run a weekly after school “Imagineering” Club for yr6 (10 year olds) at a local primary school with the dedicated support from another 5 Xaar employees.
- Over the years I have been involved in many other STEM events from running projects with local 6th form students, judging projects at national STEM award events, supporting STEM activity days run at local schools, to name a few.
Why: Broadening the understanding children have of what a career in STEM subjects could be, and being able to help understand the real world link to the subjects covered at school is an honour. Sparking an interest in a subject that would otherwise have been overlooked by an interactive and hands on approach gives a real a buzz, hopefully to the students as well as to me! It is good fun for the students and for me and I just enjoy trying to demonstrate the huge variety of choice there is when considering a future in STEM.
