Skip to main content

Stepping up: How to get recognised for your service hours through charity walks

Walking events are such a fun and easy way to volunteer your time for a great cause and I would recommend it to everyone! - Clancy Toman

Clancy was initially drawn to the Sutherland Shire Relay for Life Charity Walk because of friendship. However, not long after crossing the finish line, Clancy Toman (UTS Law student and Brennanite) was awarded 20 Leadership through Service hours for completion. How? Read on to find out more.

Throughout your Brennan participation, it’s common to scratch your head and wonder “how am I going to complete 200 hours!?”. While it may feel an efficient use of time to complete them all in one organisation, its important to remember that there’s a variety of ways you can accrue those hours. This increases your awareness of various charities, Not-For-Profits, and pro-bono work, while introducing you to the community you’ll serve as a lawyer in your future legal career. Also, you get to make friends and have fun! What’s not to love?

One of these unique LTS opportunities are charity walks. In the Brennan Handbook, available under the Brennan Program Resources webpage, you’ll see that each Brennanite can accrue up to 20 LTS hours over the life of their Brennan Program involvement. You can either accrue this in one charity walk event, or over multiple. However, don’t forget each student is capped at 20LTS for the duration of their entire program.

“For me, participating in this event left me with such a great feeling and sense of accomplishment in being part of a group of people that join together for the benefit of a common cause. It was also so fun to do this with my friends, and I have gained some amazing memories and experiences.”

Students who complete these walks generally join in teams, for example, the UTS City2Surf team invites students from all over UTS, each year, to raise money for charity. However, you can get your own friends together and start fundraising on your own for any charity walk. There’s plenty of autonomy and creative potential for your team’s name, selected charity, matching outfits and training!

collage of two images, first image 2 hands holding a medal for a team to complete 24 hour marathon and second photo is a picture of the team members

Medals received by Clancy and teammate for completing 42.12km over 24 hours, and picture of team who kept going all night!

To get recognised for your hard work, there’s a few important things to keep in mind:

  1. Make sure you document your charity walk with lots of fun photos
  2. Keep a record of the fundraising details, e.g. amount raised and charity
  3. Get into social media and don’t be afraid to post your donation details and team invitations in the Brennan Collective
  4. Use your documentation in place of a Confirmation of Service form, submit in one word or PDF document into a Leadership through Service Form in your Brennan Workflow via CareerHub. Checkout the images Clancy used to document the charity walk. This is a great example of what to include in your document when submitting via CareerHub.
collage of three images. image one is a screenshot of the walking route for a marathon in Strava, second image is a team photo of the marathon walkers, third image is a screenshot of instagram story promoting the donation link for the team's involvement

Clancy's route, an image of the team getting ready to walk, and a screenshot of the donate link for raising funds.

Not sure who to join with? Clancy suggests not to worry about that because when you join a team you can “meet heaps of new friends as people are really friendly and welcoming to all”.

Interested? Why not join the UTS City2Surf Team where you can walk and represent UTS each August. Questions about the opportunity should be directed to ActivateUTS.