Good news about home visiting

O A B’s Volunteer Home Visiting Scheme has been awarded Approved Provider Standard (APS) by the Mentoring and Befriending Foundation. APS is a nationally accepted benchmark recognising safe, effective and professional practice delivering a quality service. We’re really pleased with this endorsement of the scheme, which pairs up volunteers with people who are visually impaired and could do with some extra help at home – whether it’s dealing with correspondence, getting out for a short walk or just a bit of company. A very big thank you to all our Volunteer Home Visitors (more than 50 in Oxford, and 7 in Banbury) who make this possible.

O A B Summer Raffle

Following from the success of our “Summer 2009” raffle, we are happy to enclose a book of tickets for this year’s raffle with your newsletter.

The top prize on offer is £200, with £50 and a fine selection of wines as second and third prizes. Every pound of profit will go straight towards helping visually impaired people in Oxfordshire.

To stand a chance of winning, please remember to fill in your address and contact details on the stub for each ticket you’d like to enter. Tickets are £1 and each book contains ten tickets.

If you would like more tickets, please let the O A B team know and we will have more sent to you. If you would rather not receive any tickets in the future, we would also welcome your notifying us. We have done our best to not enclose tickets for those of you who requested this last year.

The draw will be held on Tuesday July 13th, with winners being notified that same week. We ask that all tickets for entry are completed and returned by Friday July 2nd. As a cost saving measure, we have decided to refrain from sending receipts confirming your entry this year, though we are very happy to do so if requested.

Thank you, and good luck!

Garden Party 2009

The sun is shining; young men from Oxford’s Round Table are dressed in their finest waiting outfits and dashing around a marquee full of supporters for a local Oxfordshire charity; the author Colin Dexter is sitting down and speaking with his fellow guests after an entertaining talk on “Morse’s Oxford”; wine is circulating. This was the O A B’s 2009 Garden Party, on a sunny Sunday in July.

In the days and weeks following last year’s party, we received dozens of thank you cards from those who attended, and all mentioned how much they enjoyed Colin’s talk and the assistance which was provided by the Round Table and O A B volunteers. This is just one of the reasons why we were very appreciative to everyone who made the event possible. We are, then, very grateful to Colin Dexter, The Oxford Round Table, and a number of our volunteers who have once again agreed to help us put on another party this year.

We are excited by its prospect and hope that it may help the charity raise as much as possible for our new, important Resource Centre.

You are welcome to read about this year’s Garden Party and fill out our application form for a ticket on the next page.