Growing Minds, the collaborative project convened by OCF to tackle educational inequality, has had to adapt quickly to the circumstances imposed by the coronavirus outbreak. Partners are moving some elements of the project online, whilst other aspects have become more important than ever in the current context.
ACT is a small charity in Oxford providing housing and support for people at the margins of society: homeless people, ex-offenders, and people struggling with mental health. Their outreach work centres on food, in particular weekly communal meals.
OCF has made online statistical mapping tool Local Insight available free of charge to assist the charitable sector in identifying those most vulnerable to the crisis.
Following the launch of OCF’s new Community Resilience Fund, over £100,000 has already been awarded to support local community and voluntary organisations meeting the new needs and challenges created by the coronavirus.
Adrian is working with OCF on a freelance basis to help us develop the strategic direction of our Coronavirus: Community Resilience Fund. We hope that this work will inform OCF’s future approach to harnessing the power of community more generally.
Earlier this week OCF had a fantastically well attended and lively discussion about narrowing the disadvantage gap for children in their early years.
Research into ‘Technology in the Charitable Sector’ has found that hundreds of hours are wasted making unsuccessful grant applications, and that funders and charities are open to change.
The Age Friendly Banbury partnership has just learnt it has not been successful in bidding for Phase 2 funding from the DCMS and Big Lottery Place Based Social Action programme. Nonetheless, partners remain determined to continue the positive steps started.
OCF’s Community Integration Grants funded projects that nurture mutual understanding, trust and friendship between people of different ethnicities, ages or socio-economic backgrounds. At an event on Tuesday, all the charities funded came together to celebrate their work, alongside the donors who enabled the grants.
The recent tragic deaths in Oxford have saddened everyone involved in the homeless sector and beyond. They come as the City Conversation partnership on rough sleeping becomes Oxford Homeless Movement, with a vision to ensure that nobody should have to sleep rough on our streets.
