"Learning with Fun at MathS  Volunteers"

This blog is written by: 

• Kiran Naz (PhD student at COMSATS University Islamabad, Lahore campus, Pakistan)

• Mehak Aftab ( Master's student at University of Peshawar, Pakistan)

• Nimra Shoket (Master's student at Abdus Salam School of Mathematical Sciences, Lahore, Pakistan)

"In this blog, we are going to share our introductory experience as “ Maths Volunteers Students’ Representatives (MVSRs)”  at “The Maths Volunteers Foundation”. This foundation is an online platform that guides students from developing countries on core topics in mathematical sciences. They also provide guidelines for masters and PhD scholarships in Europe and the United States of America. Recently, Maths Volunteers announced the volunteer positions of MVSRs and we were among the luckiest students to be selected for the role. On October 22, the Maths Volunteers team organized a very informative and fun introductory virtual session for the newly recruited MVSRs. 

In this session, we learned about the members of Maths Volunteers and services that they offer.  The main focus of this session was to guide us about their tasks being a part of Maths Volunteers, which includes scholarship applications and documents (e.g. cover letter, motivation letter, statements, proposals) and soft skills training (e.g formal communication, team work, leaderships). The executive director encourages us to get benefits from all the services of Maths Volunteers.  The service which we liked the most was the invited talks voluntarily delivered by the international academics.

In the second half of this session, every person had the opportunity to introduce themselves. We got the chance to meet other MVSRs and learn about their interests, hobbies and other activities. It was a great exercise to improve our communication skills and ideas about young researchers in our field. We believe this will be beneficial for upcoming seminars and conferences. It was great to see everyone showing their enthusiasm for this activity.

At the end, we had a Kahoot online game which was like a quiz competition. Everyone was very much excited while answering questions as well as during the session. Shiza was the winner of this quiz. We learnt about the task of students’ representatives, about the team of Maths Volunteers, and how to interact formally with each other. Students from different universities shared their ideas, hobbies and goals. The dedication and passion of the team of The Maths Volunteers Foundation has inspired us to explore opportunities and give it back to my community. As we all know ‘Helping anyone without any reward gives us happiness and in return God will reward us In Sha Allah’. We are grateful for the opportunity to have a part of this team and excited to explore the world of mathematics. Attending this introductory session had not only deepened my understanding but also highlighted the power of volunteerism in education. 

Remarks:

We recommend that students who want to learn soft skills or how to avail scholarship should join "The Maths Volunteers Foundation”."