Impact Awards: Recognising the Work of HAPHE Students

Josh - UOBth Maths & Economics 'Impact Awards was a welcomed bonus'

Starting a HAPHE Team is about more than coffee, conversations, and campus connection. It’s about creating real change reducing the events that cause trauma and anxiety by helping students spread their energy across healthier, more balanced connections. That kind of change deserves recognition. That’s where Impact Awards come in.

Why recognition matters

University life can be demanding. Students often juggle coursework, part-time jobs, and personal pressures. Giving time and energy to lead a HAPHE Team or run activities isn’t just volunteering, it’s meaningful work that builds skills and transforms campus culture. Recognition ensures that effort doesn’t go unseen or unsupported.

What Impact Awards are

Impact Awards are financial awards that celebrate students who create measurable change through their HAPHE activities. Whether it’s running a weekly meet-up, organising a campus campaign, or helping peers find balance, these awards highlight the difference students make in reducing the triggers of trauma and anxiety.

Examples of impact that may qualify include:

• A student who starts a meet-up that grows into a supportive community across a department.

• A team that bridges friendship groups, building a wider culture of balance on campus.

Building skills for the future

Impact Awards do more than ease financial pressure, they also highlight qualities employers and graduate schools are looking for. Receiving an Impact Award demonstrates that a student has identified a problem, created a solution, and mobilised others. It is concrete recognition of leadership, adaptability, and initiative kills that are highly valuable in today’s world.

A culture of appreciation

HAPHE Teams are about prevention and connection: stopping trauma and anxiety before they take root by diversifying the ways students invest their energy. Recognising the students who make this possible encourages more peers to step forward, share ideas, and create lasting change.

The takeaway

When students give their time and creativity to reduce trauma and anxiety on campus, they’re shaping futures their own and others’. Impact Awards are a way to honour that work, support it financially, and signal to the wider world that student-led change matters.

Change begins in small circles. See how HAPHE began and spread, and explore how prevention builds resilience.

 Learn to recognise triggers of student trauma, and discover how to start your own HAPHE team on campus.

 Every conversation can spark a movement yours might be next.