I recently volunteered to be part of Community Gospel Choir as part of Festival Teesside which took place in Stewarts Park Middlesbrough. The idea of the choir was to bring together a group of students from different cultures in order to celebrate the beautiful diversity of students within Teesside. 

I chose to volunteer for the choir for my own personal development and to overcome my fears of standing up in front of a crowd of people. Through this opportunity, I have developed my public speaking and communication skills and I now have experience in stage performance and event management.

Paula, our singing teacher guided me and taught me to “ Believe in my Stride” and I am now taking this forward and living with it everyday.  I thoroughly enjoyed the company and kindness of the choir and everyone else who was involved with this project and now the performance has taken place, I am really going to miss our Friday rehearsals.

I have found that as an international student, there are many opportunities available and volunteering is one of those opportunities. It is amazing to volunteer and I would recommend that you take up volunteering opportunities and you will never look back.