(Written by Rebecca Rowney, One Young World Bath Delegate for Humanities and Social Sciences)
An introduction to who I am:
My name is Rebecca Rowney and I am very excited to have been selected as the One Young World delegate for the faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences. I will be going into my fourth and final year studying International Development with Economics at Bath after the Montreal conference in September.
What I hope to get out of being a delegate:
I am pursing a career in tackling global issues and I want to dedicate my life to making genuine, meaningful difference to people around the world. I think that being a part of the One Young World community will be a great help in that. I hope that the Q&A sessions, speeches, and workshops at the conference will help me with career development in this area.
I also hope that I can contribute some interesting perspectives and share my knowledge from previous roles in the charity sector, my role as a social researcher for the British government and my experience on the international team for the former government.
The plenary challenges for discussion at Montreal that am I most interested in:
A lot of my volunteer work has involved working with refugees in northern France and those impacted by the genocide orchestrated by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. I am very interested in understanding more about delivering lasting peace, as I have seen first hand the extreme suffering associated with conflict and violence, understanding ways to tackle the root cause of this is something that I see as extremely important.
My role for the Bath 2025 caucus:
I am leading on relationships for the Bath forum which will be held on the 29 March 2025. This involves finding sponsorship, speakers and other interested contributors for the event. I hope that the contacts that I have made in some of my previous jobs will come in useful for this role.
Applications will be opening in September for students to join the teams planning the event.
Volunteer mobilisation at Bath:
My personal project associated with my roles as a One Young World delegate is to mobilise more students to take up part time volunteering whilst studying at Bath. I have begun planning how to achieve this aim and hope to put my plans into action in September.
Students often have lots of free time with only a few lectures each day which means they may have the time to be able to lend as a volunteer. I believe that student volunteer mobilisation can bring benefits to both local charities who often struggle with a lack of volunteers, and the students volunteers themselves. Volunteering has been shown to improve both mental and physical wellbeing, and it should also give students valuable skills for their CVs.
Thank you for reading and please feel free to get in touch with me on my email rar61@bath.ac.uk.
Over the next following weeks, the 2 other One Young World Bath delegates will be sharing their stories and motivations.
Respond
