Settling into Cambridge life – whether you’re a fresher or a returning student – is always a shock to the system. After three months without supervisions, where weekends are actually weekends and your inbox remains blissfully empty, the feeling of the bubble closing around you can be extremely daunting. Trying to juggle work with friends and societies is stressful enough, and everyone’s time is at a premium – so why would anyone want to give it away? How popular, and practical, is volunteering? Does anyone have time for good deeds these days?

All things considered, the opportunities for philanthropy of any kind are numerous in Cambridge. RAG is perhaps the most famous, describing itself as “an independent student-run charity fundraising organisation”, and is responsible for some of the biggest student events of the year: Jailbreak, Blind Date and Lost, to name just a few. They raised a remarkable £180,000 in 2011-12, up from £158,000 the previous year, and are linked to similar university RAG organisations across the country.

For those who want to be more directly involved in charity work, then Student Community Action (the SCA) is there to help. It is an independent charity which “recruits and places student volunteers from the University of Cambridge and Anglia Ruskin University in any one of dozens of projects in Cambridge”, and works hard to make a real difference to the community.

As students who loudly invade the city for 24 weeks a year, it is a way to give back, to contribute to the wellbeing of the residents who put up with the bikes, books and boozing so patiently. It’s easy for any discussion about volunteering to sound trite or pious or even patronising, but it would be even more misrepresentative simply to ignore the good that such projects do. As a project co-ordinator for a nursing home in Cambridge, I’ve seen firsthand the real, tangible joy that volunteering can bring, both for the volunteer and the resident. Too many elderly people who spend their lives staring blankly at a television screen because there just aren’t enough staff or resources to give equal amounts of time to every resident, and any family lives too far away for frequent visits.

Last year, a blind Romanian lady tentatively asked if she could show me something. It was a half-finished lace doily, each stitch done painstakingly by hand, relying solely on years of practice, as her eyes had now failed her. She told me how her grandmother had taught her when she was five years old, and how she had even sent a lace handkerchief to the Queen. When I stood up to go, she took my hand and thanked me for listening. She said she was so happy she’d had the chance to tell her story.

And it is not just the elderly who stand to gain from such projects. There are schemes involving children – homework clubs, or helping those who speak English as a second language. One of the most well-known is Big Sibs, whereby a volunteer becomes a sort of adopted big brother or sister to disadvantaged children. They may have suffered a bereavement, have learning difficulties, or have parents with disabilities, but the volunteer visits once or twice a week and spends time one-on-one with their ‘little sib’, at the park, at the cinema, or even just watching television. It gives the children a level of stability and routine they may be missing from their lives, as well as something to look forward to that is ‘just theirs’.

Sadly though, volunteer numbers are falling. Between the 1st and 16th October 2012, 50 volunteers signed up, down from 75 in 2011. There are about 50 volunteers desperately needed to be paired up with individuals for projects like Big Sibs, Taskforce, TESL (Teaching English as a Second Language) and Homework Help, as well as additional volunteers to help out at group activities like the Sunday Social Club (for disadvantaged children) and homework sessions at a local school. The community is asking for help, but there it seems that there is simply not enough to go around.

The SCA is unsure of the reasons for this dip in new recruits. It is possible that some may be put off by the time commitment (which can seem discouraging) and don’t realise that it is usually flexible and can be changed to suit your timetable. Or perhaps it’s the hassle of signing up. It’s true that you must complete a CRB check, but unless you’re harbouring any secret convictions it is a form that takes under twenty minutes to complete.

After the enormous success of the Olympics, when people gave hours of their time to stand in the rain directing spectator after spectator to the correct stations, stands and stadia, it comes as a great surprise that numbers of volunteers are dropping. Did we not thank the volunteers with raucous applause at the closing ceremony? Did we not refer to them as the ‘Games Makers’, the very people responsible for making the Olympics happen? Yet maybe instead of a passion for volunteering, the Games have fired us with a new desire to try our hand at different sports, and people are spending more time training and practising these new skills.

At any rate, it is not clear quite why the numbers are falling so fast. What is clear is that the community need support, and whether this a day spent at a fundraiser or an hour a week listening to children read, we can help. Such projects have transformed the lives of many local residents. But others will remain on the waiting list for months and months, until a new recruit decides to sign up and, in doing so, makes their lives that little bit easier.