On Thursday 3 March – University Mental Health Day – Royal Holloway students visited St Jude’s C of E Junior school in Englefield Green to help plant trees.

The student volunteers donate their spare time as part of the ‘Love your Community’ volunteering initiative which encourages students from the university to serve the wider community.

Team Leader and second year Law and Criminology student, Daniel Phillips, was contacted by the local junior school who asked for help with planting trees that had recently been delivered to them.

Daniel said: “Being approached by the school was incredibly welcoming and helping is always something we like to do!

“The student volunteers thoroughly enjoyed spending time planting the trees and as the event fell on University Mental Health Day, it allowed us all to enjoy the outdoors whilst giving back to the community.”

Vicki Chiverton, Headteacher at St Jude’s C of E Junior School, said: “We have been lucky enough to have some small trees donated to us with which we want to create a small copse for our Forest School area. This then presented the question over who was going to plant them!  Having had volunteers from the Love Your Community team in school before, we decided to ask them if they were up for the challenge and they certainly were. We are so lucky to have this resource on our doorstep and are extremely grateful to the students who came and gave their time willingly to St Jude’s Junior School.”

For more information on Royal Holloway volunteering, visit here.