May has been a busy month for Oxford Hub, with many events focused on building relationships in communities, skilling up changemakers and celebrating our 15th birthday! Keep on reading to see what we’ve been up to this last month. — By Gloria Morey-Picking. 15th-anniversary Exhibition Launch Event At the end of the month, we held an exhibition to celebrate 15 years of student volunteering — as 2022 marks Oxford Hub’s 15th birthday! We showcased a selection of the fantastic things we have achieved over the past 15 years, most of which wouldn’t have been…

This week is National Volunteering Week. At Oxford Hub we want to thank all of the amazing people across the city who volunteer their time and participate in their communities. Now more than ever we need to help each other and all invest in our local communities. — Volunteering can take many forms but for some programmes, what is needed is a long term commitment. Through Big Brothers Big Sisters (BBBS), we ask people to commit, for the long term, to a child in Oxfordshire. We match people with a child who would benefit from an extra adult…

April has flown by, and the team has been reflecting on all of the new learning and exciting opportunities coming up at Oxford Hub. Read on for a whistle-stop recap of some of the things we’ve been up to in the past few weeks. — Marmalade From 5th to 9th April, three enquiries were made at the annual Marmalade conference, centred around three big questions: How can we design and deliver services that really work for people?

Over the last six months, Oxford Hub has coordinated and participated in a series of peer support sessions for people working on Equity, Diversity and Inclusion in their organisations. In this blog, facilitators Katharine and Khosar reflect on some of the learning they’ve taken away from the series… Like many…

March has been a month of reflecting on anniversaries and looking forward as we make changes. Read about all this and more in our monthly round-up. — Team Day On Tuesday 1st March, the Oxford Hub team gathered together at The Venue in Cowley for our first all-team, in-person meeting of the year. We heard about the Ready Set Go focus group, with parents from Blackbird Leys and Cowley discussing the barriers to getting local children swimming. Following a…

Back in September, we blogged about shifting from crisis response to community building as we shape our former pandemic response, Together Neighbours, for the long-term. The past two years have seen major changes: we stepped up quickly in March 2020, mobilising volunteers and getting on the phone to respond to…

The Blackbird Leys Community Fund is a new fund for members of the community who have an idea to improve the lives of future Leys residents. Local people receive the funding and local people make the decisions about the fund. The fund was run following a participatory grantmaking approach. This…

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…

We’re approaching two years since the COVID-19 pandemic reached Oxford. Since then, we have helped launch Oxford Together alongside lots of partner organisations to coordinate the community response to the changing situation. In this blog, team member Sophie reflects on her experience of these two strange and often challenging years, and how we have learned, grown and changed along the way… — I know it’s not just me who is finding it hard to remember what has happened over the past two years. At work at Oxford Hub, in the rest of my life, and in the world, it all feels blurry. At the same time, I know it hasn’t felt like…