Bring Your Own Community Project

If you arrive already connected to a community organisation — through volunteering, work, family, a club, or an earlier placement. this pathway is for you! Instead of applying to a listed project, you bring the partner, and the two of you scope the work together.

It suits two situations: you are already doing something with a community organisation and want to take it further as a SoCIETIE Project, or you have a standing relationship you would like to deepen into a substantive piece of work.

What you propose has to be a real project in collaboration with the partner, not a task invented to satisfy the course. The test is simple: the organisation would want this done whether or not you were enrolled.

You will practise the part of community work that listed projects hand to you already solved — turning a relationship into an agreed piece of work. That means negotiating scope with someone whose priorities are not yours, being honest about what a student can deliver in the time available, and holding a collaboration together when the partner's needs shift mid-semester. If you do this well, you'll leave with something rarer than a completed project: evidence that you can start one and deliver a defined output.

This pathway asks a little more of you up front than joining a listed project does.

Before you propose it, you need to have talked it through with the partner — not floated the idea, but sat down and worked out what the collaboration actually involves: what they need, what you can realistically do, who you report to, and what "finished" looks like. Expect that to take more than one conversation.

You then write it up as a project outline in your Course Pathway Plan. That outline is what gets assessed as a proposal, so it needs to name the organisation, your contact there, the problem you are working on, and what you will hand over.

Talk to the Course Convenor early if you are unsure whether an idea fits. It is much easier to reshape a proposal in week 1 than in week 6.

A project outline in your Course Pathway Plan, agreed with the partner, covering: the organisation and your contact there; the problem or opportunity; what you will produce; roughly how many hours you expect it to take; and how you and the partner will stay in touch.

After that, deliverables are whatever you and the partner agreed — the same expectations as any other SoCIETIE Project.

Recommended to students who:

• Already volunteer with, work for, or sit on the committee of a community organisation
• Have a partner relationship from an earlier course, internship or placement they want to extend
• Are confident enough to negotiate scope rather than be handed a brief
• Have a specific problem in mind, not just an organisation they like

Two cautions. A project you propose is still bound by the course timeline and hour expectations, so be realistic about what fits. And if the organisation is your employer, be clear with everyone about which hours are work and which are the Project.