One of the ways we encourage students to get involved in the wider community is through volunteering, for which we won The Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service. The award recognised Royal Holloway Volunteering’s work in helping build strong communities by inspiring students to volunteer and lead projects to support local organisations. The award was presented by Her Royal Highness The Princess Royal, Chancellor, University of London.

Royal Holloway volunteers provide around 11,000 volunteering hours a year, many in support of local projects and activities ranging from monthly tea parties and weekly sing-alongs for older people, a choir for local people with learning difficulties, technology based school workshops and working with local care homes to support older people interact with the digital age. Initiatives include clearing woodland, tidying the riverbank and other conservation work, collections for Runnymede foodbank and general tasks such as painting, cleaning and litter picking to help keep the local area clean.   

Find out more about our Community Action Partners' Network.

As one of the UK’s top 25 universities Royal Holloway makes a significant contribution to the local economy. A 2021 independent review of the economic contribution of the university showed that from the £657.1m a year that Royal Holloway contributes to the UK economy, £221.3m a year of that goes to Surrey and an estimated £190.8m to Runnymede, of which £65m came from students. Royal Holloway also supports employment, generating 7,150 jobs across the UK with more than 3,000 jobs in Surrey and 2,760 jobs locally in Runnymede.

Royal Holloway supports a local events throughout the year including the Egham Royal Show and the Englefield Green Village Fete.

Our academic departments get involved with local schools in a number of ways. Examples include the Department of Biological Sciences which has helped local schools to learn about, and make homes for, wildlife from beetles to birds and fauna to fungi in their school grounds. 

The student volunteering outreach scheme enables student volunteers within the Department of Law and Criminology to support the community by providing legal workshops which are delivered under the supervision of qualified legal professionals or academic members of staff. You can find out more here.

We have also cemented a partnership with the Reach Foundation to support young people in Feltham. The partnership seeks to leverage the respective roles played by each institution to create more impact than that which would have been possible alone. The partnership grew out of a shared focus on widening access. As Royal Holloway recruits more and more undergraduates from the local community, Feltham was identified as a priority. One member of our widening access team spends time every week in Feltham, and works closely with careers leads in three local secondary schools. Mentoring programmes involving Royal Holloway undergraduate ambassadors are planned for 2022 to help young people and their families better understand higher education.

Many of our students choose to continue to live within the wider Egham and Runnymede area after they have graduated. If you are a graduate of Royal Holloway, find out more about the ongoing support available to you. 

Royal Holloway has a number of job vacancies available throughout the year including part time and fixed term contracts.