Current Students and Staff

Six Loughborough University students who will be volunteering in Zambia this summer to boost sports coaching and development will be supported by Loughborough’s bus company, Kinchbus.

The company – whose sprint service connects the town and the University – has sponsored the students as part of a volunteering project called Volunteer Zambia, with £100 each.

The cash is helping the students pay for kit, training, equipment, travel and living costs in the Zambian capital Lusaka during their six-week placement.

Karolina Balcova, a third-year Sport and Exercise Sciences student, is one of the Loughborough volunteers. Karolina, who will focus on volleyball during the summer, said: “We aim to develop the foundations for sport in Zambia.

“Each coach who we help will go on to help others and that will help the sports become sustainable. It’s also going to be a completely new experience for me and I’m very interested in sports development.

“It’s great to have the support of Kinchbus and the sprint, which I use pretty much every day to get between lectures.”

Another of the students going to Zambia is Charlotte Sparlin, a first-year student studying Sports Coaching.

She commented: “I’m really looking forward to it and counting down the days.

“We’ve still got some group fundraising to do and to all be supported by Kinchbus is great. It shows a local company cares about what we are doing.”

Charlotte, who referees football as one of her roles, added: “I’ll be based at an orphanage and I’m aiming to give the children who live and go to school there some of the coaching in sport that I enjoyed when I was their age.”

Kinchbus general manager, Sue Blount, said: “We were very pleased to hear from Karolina and her colleagues about their volunteering with this excellent project in Zambia.

“They each had a lot of fundraising to do too, and both Kinchbus and sprint are right behind all of them.”