The Westgate Fund was established in 2017 with a £125,000 donation from John Lewis, and is held and managed by Oxfordshire Community Foundation (OCF). Since then it has funded 18 different community initiatives across Oxford.
OCF hosted a webinar this week, focusing on the opportunities to tackle homelessness, following the national ‘everyone in’ policy at the start of lockdown. The webinar, timed in the week of World Homeless Day, also looked at how the partners in Oxfordshire Homeless Movement are responding locally.
OCF has awarded grants, totalling over £58,000 and supporting nearly 32,000 people, as part of a funding round to support COVID-19 response and recovery. These grants, funded from our Community Resilience Fund, aimed to give smaller organisations vital funding as they continue to respond to the pandemic, or enter the recovery phase.
Age Friendly Banbury partners encourage return to the town centre as the team gathered in the Market Square on Monday this week.
We have taken the difficult decision to close our grant application process to ensure that we can continue to support the local charitable sector in tackling the longer-term fall-out of the virus, and be prepared for a second wave.
With the continued lockdown, we wanted to update you on how we have adapted and what OCF and its partners have learnt in the last 12 weeks. From awarding over £500k in grants, to housing the homeless, to working and (lunching!) virtually and Zoom becoming a verb (and not just a great song!) Read on to catch up on our journey since March..
OCF has temporarily paused applications to our Coronavirus: Community Resilience Fund whilst we deal with a backlog of existing applications.
Two projects, supported by funds raised through Oxford Homeless Movement, are aiming to help homeless and vulnerably housed people transition successfully from emergency Covid-19 accommodation to an independent life in their own self-supported housing.
Local charity Active Oxfordshire is promoting the ‘Mayathon’ challenge, which encourages people to take on 26 minutes of activity every day throughout May, ending with a ‘Finish Line Finale’ on 26th May at 2pm. Sponsorship funds are being raised towards OCF’s Community Resilience Fund.
Services include food parcel delivery, online exercise and arts classes, and printed flyers signposting people without internet access to the facilities available.