Oxford Hub February Monthly Round-up
February flew by here at Oxford Hub, in part because it’s a shorter month, but mainly due to how jam-packed our activities were across the team!
From launching new collaborations to facilitating student placements, our team have been busy at work, striving together with the local community to build a better Oxford. We ran swimming sessions for local children in partnership with Radley College, and our team of Parent Advocates got together to discuss everything they’ve been learning and doing, and plans for what’s next. We’ve also been cooking up plans for the Marmalade event in the first week of April — see the Marmalade website for more information about this exciting week of talks, workshops and creative discussions about social change in Oxford!
Here’s a snapshot of what else has been happening:
Hub Trustee Programme Training
The Hub Trustee Programme has been working with the Lived Experience Advisory Forum to support people with lived experience of charities’ areas of work to become trustees. We provide training for participants to help them make the most of their trusteeship. Most recently, our Deputy CEO Ray ran a really informative session on charity finances.
In case you missed it, Oxford Hub is currently recruiting trustees! We’re strongly encouraging applications from people with different backgrounds and perspectives to help shape the future of Oxford Hub. You don’t need experience of being on a board to apply — we’ll provide you with training just like this to support you along the way!
Social Action Lab: Delivering Projects
From 25–27 February, a group of Oxford students took part in a weekend-long social action workshop that tackled all aspects of project delivery and planning — from project management basics to collecting and reviewing feedback. During the weekend, students worked with the team behind the Botley Bikers food delivery scheme which supports people experiencing homelessness in the community, providing them with food that supermarkets and wholesalers might well have wasted. Together, they came up with workable future solutions to improve the organisation’s service to the local community and those who need it most.
Alongside training and team exercises, the students joined the Botley Bikers on their route around town to talk to users and volunteers about their experience with the scheme, producing a report on the future of Botley Bikers to follow. Not only did this give students a chance to learn new skills and meet like-minded people, but also collaborate, engage with and learn from the excellent work of one of our many local community partners. We’re looking forward to the next Social Action Lab on all things Campaigning in collaboration with Oxford Mutual Aid in March.
Crankstart Scholar Placements
For two weeks in February, we had some wonderful Crankstart and Lloyds Scholars joining us behind the scenes to help out with our programmes. Crankstart and Lloyds Scholars are students from the University of Oxford from low-income households. This was a great time for them to demonstrate creative skills and show initiative as they learned how our programmes worked at the organisational level and helped us plan the future direction of them. They made some brilliant contributions, such as advice on how we can improve our website, ideas for fun days out for our youth programmes and plans for new stock at OxUnboxed. We hope this opportunity has empowered them to realise their potential to make social change and consider the third sector as a career opportunity.
Give it a Go Day
Crankstart and Lloyds Scholars also got a more short-term opportunity to try out our programmes on a Give It A Go Day! This is a volunteering taster day where they were able to try out some of our volunteering programmes, including Schools Plus and OxUnboxed. The sessions were great fun, with Scholars making posters to advertise Oxford Hub in their colleges, making school resources that would be useful for future Schools Plus tutors, and much more. We look forward to seeing the Scholars who tried out our programmes getting involved more long-term.
If you’d like to be part of our important work to support Scholars and connect them to the local community, have a look at our latest job opportunity, the Student Support Officer role. More details here.
Uncomfortable Oxford Ticket Booking Launch at OxUnboxed
You can now buy tickets for Uncomfortable Oxford walking tours at OxUnboxed! Uncomfortable Oxford was one of our previous Social Enterprise Award winners, and it’s been great to see the team working again with Oxford Hub. To celebrate the launch of this collaboration, Uncomfortable Oxford’s brilliant student guides offered free mini-walking tours, discussing ongoing legacies of inequality, imperialism and empire as they relate to the city we live in. To learn more about the Uncomfortable Oxford initiative you can check out their website, or head to OxUnboxed to book your tickets for a tour!
