That’s how the Hub began
Story collected from Sara Fernandez, CEO of Oxford Hub
Collected by Aram Masharqa
Edited by Robert Swallow
I was at Merton College from 2006 to 2009. When I arrived, I really wanted to get involved with volunteering and went to the freshers’ fair. There were only two ways I could really volunteer: I could work with kids with disabilities or help kids learn English as a second language with a group called Jacari. At the time I thought, “Well, I don’t really like kids”, and “I don’t even speak English that well!”, because I’m Spanish. I looked for other places to do volunteering and instead of going through the university, I did lots of volunteering in the city with refugees and older people. I found, when I went back to the college hall for dinner, people would talk about how they’d spent the day in the library, and when I said, “I’ve been playing cricket with refugee kids.” They’d all go, “what are you talking about?!” I loved it. I loved it more than my studies perhaps. I shouldn’t say that really, but it’s true.
While I was studying, I heard people were setting up Oxford Hub. It was set up with international development and climate change in mind and it wanted to educate future leaders. When you consider that future prime ministers will likely come from Oxford University, it makes sense. The thought was, “what if the leaders of the future didn’t just do a PPE degree, but engaged with the issues around climate change and around fair development?” They all went to Law Soc and the Oxford Union while the charity groups had far smaller profiles, so Oxford Hub brought the charity groups all together. That’s how the Hub began and I joined when I graduated.
As Oxford Hub found its feet, we still felt like it was important to discuss the big issues. In a city like Oxford, however, where inequality is such a big issue, it would be silly to not act with a local focus. We also wanted to increase the number of opportunities for students to connect with the city and not stay stuck in their college bubbles. As time went on, we were setting up projects all around the city, working with local partners, museums, running bike recycling schemes, volunteering programmes, and helping older people in care homes. We engaged over 900 students each year across the community. For me, the history of the Hub is really that realisation that students have a lot of potential and the power to make a big difference.
In 2011, we set up a local enterprise called Turl Street Kitchen to host local social action. It was focussed on sustainable, local food but also provided a space for groups to meet up, organise campaigns and work together in public settings rather than at unions or boathouses. It ran for nearly nine years until the pandemic hit. Nowadays, because we want people to think of Oxford Hub as all over the city, we have an office on Little Clarendon Street and one in Blackbird Leys too. Turl Street Kitchen was great because it was central, but we want to draw students out and help them meet people they wouldn’t otherwise have met off their student islands.
In 2018, we span out of Student Hubs, a collective of similar charities in Cambridge, Bristol and Southampton inspired by Oxford Hub. We were finding, at the time, that people wanted to volunteer, and we had to say “no”, because they weren’t students. Setting up as Oxford Hub was an opportunity to build the network in the city and build the long-term relationships by being rooted in the community. We chose to focus on our students and our city and grew our activities in Blackbird Leys, Cutteslowe, Rose Hill and Cowley. As a result of doing that, when the pandemic came, we were already prepared to step into action, because we were already spread around the city.
Lots of people have turned around and said “Sara, it’s amazing what you’ve set up in the pandemic”, but we have been doing it for years. Literally. Using our infrastructure to act creatively and in a speedy and agile way has been our bread and butter for a long time. Although it was sad, because our students weren’t around, and they have always been at the heart of our work, we were able to grow our activity by working with residents. It was Oxford’s residents who were ultimately instrumental for delivering groceries, prescriptions, and managing phone-companionship campaigns. But everyone came together. Students contributed by tutoring over zoom, and it was also great to be reminded how big a part of the community the academic staff at the university is.
In fact, Oxford University has always been a huge support. Over the years, it has been increasingly outward-facing and connected with the community. As an alumna this excites me. I mean really. If it was not for the support of the university, its encouragement, the student energy and the funding, Oxford Hub would not be the resource it is for the city as a whole.
One of our most integral values is to become a consistent, reliable force in the community so we can provide a long-term, sustainable contribution. That ultimately requires building long-term relationships. Everything we do is about connecting to and talking to people, that’s the heart of our values. It is important for our students too. Lots of our student volunteers are new to Oxford and don’t necessarily know the city. When people run workshops and need to find artists, we can put people in touch with people that know the right local person, for instance. We also have a good network for resupplying resources. If we have soil leftover from a gardening initiative, we can repurpose it with a community partner that does gardening.
A lot of our new work comes from community need. Our program, “Ready Set Go”, for instance, tries to encourage cycling as a family, addressing barriers like bike access in Oxford, while encouraging activity against climate change and combatting the cost-of-living crisis. We also have people that reach out to us and say, “I really care about this. Can we make it happen?” In fact, we run Schools Plus as a community project because someone approached us and said, “I really care about improving maths at local schools”. We set up Maths Plus, now Schools Plus with her and now she’s the leader of a major thinktank. We know other ex-volunteers working in the social sector, helping in communities, or doing behind the scenes work on evaluation in the charitable sector. Others manage fundraising schemes or go into the city. We have seen time and again how Oxford Hub can ignite people’s passions in activism. Jade, in the office, was saying an ex-volunteer, now active in the climate movement, just reached out.
Our work is to give students experiences that might shape their values over time. I am very proud of the fact, and there is a ridiculous statistic to support this, that around two out of three students change their career plans after working with the Oxford Hub. I believe that the Hub gives students the chance to see what is possible if you put your mind to making a difference and work collectively to make that difference. I think that’s exciting.
It’s easy to feel like there’s nothing you can do. But you don’t have to feel that way. For us, the important thing is to find ways to make a real difference. You don’t have to have a gap year in southeast Asia to teach English. There are children in England without the opportunities to learn it. Children face those challenges here in Oxford and that’s one area where we help.
Some think that it’s hard to find the time, but the truth is there’s always time. I still get the opportunity to volunteer myself. I mentor for Big Brothers Big Sisters. In fact, getting to go out into the community is one example of how the Oxford Hub has been such a gift to me and for others to get to know the city fully. It provides the motivation to visit different areas and meet lots of different people. We live in a society that is so often so insular and some people live in cities where it doesn’t matter where you are, but I truly am connected to where I live.
At the end of the day, people want to have a stake in society. We sometimes forget that. Oxford Hub gives people an opportunity to be a part of something and to do that while meeting new friends. When I was a student, I did volunteering and that’s where I met most of my friends, people that were likeminded and wanted to have a positive impact on the world. That’s such a privilege. It’s not the essays, trips to the library or the odd all-nighter I remember, it’s volunteering.