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Students and business volunteers joined forces to give an estate in the Woodhouse area of Leeds a makeover in a project organised by the University of Leeds and Leeds Ahead.

Student volunteers and employees from Pinsent Masons, Logistik and Arup spent a day in the Holborn estate in Woodhouse painting fences, picking up litter and cutting back overgrown shrubs.

Working with Groundwork and West North West Homes, the Social Responsibility in Action project brings students, businesses and the community together to talk about social responsibility and think about ways to work together to benefit the community.

The project launched with an evening for businesses to talk about socially responsible business practice and demonstrate their achievements to the students, who then had the chance to question their volunteering programmes, reasons to get involved and the impact in the community. To follow up the team activity day the students gave presentations about what they learnt from the day and the skills they had developed. They gave feedback about the event and made recommendations to businesses about what they could do in the future and the impact of the work carried out.

This project is part of the 2010 Leeds Year of Volunteering which aims to get more people involved in volunteering in the city as well as celebrating those who already do.