Three HU students are working on an honour project focussing on collecting more volunteers for the ANNE house, a hangout spot for Ukrainians. They are creating posters, networking with other HU institutes and working. In this article, we meet the first student, Kevin van Wijk.
As a second-year business administration student, you would think Kevin would be plenty busy. Kevin, however, is different from other students, “I got bored, so I started looking for a challenge.” Kevin has completed five honours projects this year.
When Kevin started his last honours project of the year, he signed up for a consultancy project, which turned into something completely different. His teacher Iris put him in contact with Eelco, the coördinator of the Ukraine project at HU. Eelco just happened to be looking for some ambitious students for a project of his. Not just an honours project, but actual work. He needed these students to find a way to get more volunteers to the ANNE house, a sort of living room for Ukrainians in Utrecht. Kevin’s reaction was simple, “When you get a chance like this, you don’t pass on it. You just do it, even if you are not quite sure what ‘it’ is yet.”
As soon as Kevin entered the ANNE house, he got sucked right in, “They were doing an English class but did not have enough people to practice. So I helped them out, and now I still go there every Friday to help with that same English class.”
Kevin and his fellow students are making posters and building a network within HU, but the actual goal is to make their own website and buddy system. Kevin explains it perfectly, “It’s really consultancy anymore, but we are just doing it, we work well together”, and keep learning as we go.