Student ambassadors - King's College London

Imogen, who is from North Yorkshire, didn’t initially want to go to university after studying for her A Levels at College, but is now an active student volunteer mentoring school children across South London.

Imogen Bailey explains: ‘I never wanted to go to uni and only found out about my course (BA English Language & Communication) because my best friend thought I’d like it’.’

Now in her final year she has been working as a Student Ambassador for three years – the role has increased from showing potential students around the College and presenting at Open Days to spending more time doing outreach work with local schools.

Imogen started as an AimHigher Associate in her second year. The Scheme is intended to help learners from the lowest socio-economic categories to progress to higher education.  The Associates work with learners through one-to-one mentoring schemes a couple of hours each week.

Imogen says, ‘I absolutely loved it. I’d have never got into this unless I’d been to university. There are work and job roles that I’d never have found out about either. I now want a career related to education and policy.’

Imogen is on the board of student group KCL Sexpression. The student volunteers promote sexual health in schools as well as acting as student-ambassadors for further education.

This August, Imogen will be joining five other King’s students and travelling to Zimbabwe to teach university students about sexual health. The four week trip is part of MedYouth’s Project Zimbabwe and will develop an existing peer mentoring scheme. The team with train university students at the countries medical school, these students will then be able to teach school students themselves.