When it comes to enhancing employability through making the most of opportunities, some of us need a helping hand. Edge Hill’s Student Opportunity Fund (SOF) is designed to do just that.
The SOF provides financial support to enable our students to take part in activities which enhance their employability, develop transferable skills, and enrich their student experience. All our undergraduates are entitled to apply for up to £2,000 to realise and take part in fantastic opportunities.
That could be anything from assisting students to attend interviews, work experience placements and conferences, to helping to fund a trip or individual project to enhance students’ skills, knowledge and experience.
Recently, the SOF has funded places for ten BA (Hons) Counselling & Psychotherapy students to attend the 14th World Conference for Person-Centered & Experiential Psychotherapy & Counselling as full-time online delegates. The conference took place as a blended event, at Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand.
As Senior Lecturer and Programme Leader, Graham Westwell, says:
“This is an internationally recognised conference, with leaders in the field from across the globe attending and sharing current research and practice-based knowledge from within the field of Person-Centred Experiential counselling. This is highly relevant to students of the practice-based BA (Hons) Counselling and Psychotherapy programme, who are training to become qualified Person-Centred Experiential therapists. The students had access to keynote speeches, as well as a varied schedule of parallel sessions of seminars, workshops, and presentations. They also had full online access to an ongoing personal development group throughout the conference, as well as benefitting opportunities to network with other participants throughout the conference. One of the students also presented the findings of her dissertation at the conference.”

The whole point of the SOF is to prevent our students missing out on these great career-enhancing, once-in-a-lifetime opportunities. Experiences such as these can only improve our students, and if the only obstacle is a little money, we are here to help.
May 18, 2022