While there are records of informal volunteering at Royal Holloway taking place in the 1970s, formal volunteering did not begin until the founding of "Royal Holloway Community Action" in the 2002-03 academic year. Community Action officially opened on Valentines Day, 14 February, in 2003 and since then thousands of students have taken part of volunteering and social action at the university.  

Our Volunteering Hub Assistants assembled a History Hunt, a treasure hunt with a difference – guiding participants around campus to various locations QR codes to help them discover the secret history of volunteering, told across various locations!  The history hunt began at the Picture Gallery and even went down to Egham Town! 

We created a timeline of Volunteering stretching back 20 years and included memories of alumni, current students and staff that had made volunteering a part of their Royal Holloway experience. You can find the timeline online. 

We celebrated 20 years of Royal Holloway Community Action Volunteering and invited our alumni to join us on campus on Wednesday 15 February for an afternoon of networking in the Emily Wilding Davison building with special campus tours, Anniversary exhibition, filming memories, exploring our College Collections Uncovered and the unveiling of London 2012 mosaic.

To celebrate 20 years of Volunteering at Royal Holloway we commissioned this piece of art from Jenny Leonard. Using information about the volunteering team about the involvement of students over two decades, Jenny put this incredible art piece together. You can see a time lapse showing the creation of this art piece on YouTube.