People

Oxford University Student Union (OUSU)

OUSU is dedicated to enabling students to make a positive impact on the community, with a full-time elected officer for Charities and Community. Every year OUSU fundraises over £80,000 for charity, half of which is donated to local charities. OUSU runs regular collections for the Community Emergency Foodbank, encourages blood donation and last year led students to donate 10.8 tonnes of second-hand items for the British Heart Foundation. OUSU runs housing campaigns targeting rogue landlords and the lack of affordable housing. Its homelessness campaign works closely with a wide network of local charities and lobbies the collegiate University to employ those who have previously been homeless, helping them get back into work.

Student Community Wardens

OUSU manages two warden teams, one in East Oxford and one in Jericho, the areas with the highest concentrations of students. They aim to improve the communication between students and residents, and develop co-operative relationships.

The wardens work primarily by door-knocking to share information about community issues and neighbourliness, waste and recycling, landlords and letting agencies, and safety. They can act as mediators and more recently have also started running community events, which have been widely attended by both students and other local residents.

The wardens also act as student ambassadors at local meetings (including Neighbourhood Action Groups, Community Associations, Oxford Brookes Wardens, the Thames Valley Police and Oxford City Council’s Waste and Recycling Team).

Such has been their success that there were no complaints to the University from local residents in 2014–15.

The Oxford Hub

Oxford Hub is a branch of Student Hubs and enables student volunteering in Oxford. Oxford Hub supports 49 student-led volunteering projects. In the academic year 2014–15, 597 students volunteered reaching 1,080 beneficiaries in the community. These projects added capacity to over 30 local community partners, such as schools, residential homes for older people and service providers for the homeless. They also helped students to engage and inspire their peers by organising events ranging from small workshops to large conferences with 300 delegates. In total, students organised 112 events with 3,249 attendees in the last year with Oxford Hub support.

To find out more go to: www.oxfordsu.org.