Students Give a Dollar a Week to Help Other Students

Students Give a Dollar a Week to Help Other Students

The Auckland University Students’ Association has launched a scheme to encourage students to make donations from one dollar a week to help other students in need. The programme is called ‘Students for Students - Tauira mō ngā take tauira’, and all donations go directly towards AUSA’s welfare services.

“Students for Students is a great and simple way for every student at the University of Auckland to help others. Students can choose to make a nominal donation from one dollar to five dollars a week. It goes a long way to funding our key welfare services,” says Administrative Vice-President Cate Bell, who founded the Students for Students programme.

The Auckland University Students’ Association provides a range of welfare services to University of Auckland students. These include food parcels, hardship grants and textbook scholarships.

A maximum of $200 dollars can be given for each hardship grant application. For every four students who donate just one dollar a week, one hardship grant will be funded in its entirety.

“These students are in genuine financial distress. We can and only ever award hardship grants for unexpected and serious hardship. Even with the best budgeting, things can still go wrong. It could happen to anyone,” says Jessica Storey, the Welfare Officer of AUSA.

“Often the students we help are students who are studying while taking care of children, or students who have faced unexpected medical costs or unemployment and who are subsisting on the absolute bare minimum and struggling to make ends meet.”

Delays in payments by Studylink payments have been the reason for a sizeable number of applications. AUSA Welfare has also seen a spike in the demand of its services from postgraduate students this year.

“Students for Students is a simple way for me to support other students who are having a tough time,” says Lucy Cowie, a second year Bachelor of Arts student.

The programme has been well received so far. A wider promotional campaign will be launched at the University of Auckland in the coming week.

Donations from students and the general public are much appreciated. Please visit this link to donate: http://www2.ausa.auckland.ac.nz/archives/1630

ENDS

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