Book Fair

Hello everyone

You may have heard by now that the date of our book fair has changed to Saturday 4th April 2009. I hope many of you will be able to come along and help on the day with placarding, working on the till, and generally being a welcome extra pair of hands. Please comment on this blog or contact me if you can help.

We also need good-quality books to sell! If you feel like you need a good old clear-out, we'd be really grateful if you could donate your books to us. Any subject will do - academic, children's, fiction or general non-fiction will all be put to good use. We can collect them if necessary, or they can be brought straight to our sorting room at Lake Street Community centre. If you have a car and can help with collections and driving books around, please also get in touch via this blog.

We also need help with publicity - tell all your friends about the fair, and when you get your poster/s please stick them up where lots of people can see them! 

If you want to be more involved in the running of the fair, you could join us in our sorting and pricing sessions at Lake Street (off Abingdon Road). We can give directions if anyone is interested in helping with this. No experience necessary!

Finally, one of the trickiest things about the fair is getting enough people to help shift books to and from the fair on the Friday and Saturday evenings. If you can help with this please get in touch as the more helpers we have, the quicker and easier it is.

Many thanks!

Rachel

Oxford Forum for International Development

Wow, my first ever blog post!

Oxford Hub has just asked me to promote their annual conference, the Oxford Forum for International Development (OxFID) 2009, on February 7th and 8th in the Said Business School. It's priced at £14 for the whole conference weekend (including two lunches), and they welcome participants from all disciplines and levels of experience, both students and non-students. You can find out more and book on the Oxford Hub website. The theme of the conference will be "Creative Solutions to Urgent Problems". They say it like this:

"The world is approaching a crisis point. Run-away climate change and the global food crisis will continue to be exacerbated as population expands to over 9 billion people by the year 2050. A global financial crisis is reshaping the way the world's economy works. Epidemics of infectious diseases are spreading throughout the world and fresh water supplies are under threat. Slow change is no longer acceptable, urgent action is needed. OxFID 2009 aims to investigate fully the impact of all these factors on developing nations and to bring together some of the world's leading academics, creative thinkers, and NGOs to encourage debate and precipitate solutions."

People who went last year spoke very highly of it. This year's speakers include:

• Dr Andrew Steer, Director of General Policy and Research at DFID
• Aubrey Meyer, Director of the Global Commons Institute and listed by the New Statesman as 'one of the 10 people most likely to save the world'
• Dr Kevin Watkins, Director of the UN Human Development Report Agency
• Lord Robert May, former President of the Royal Society former Chief Scientist to DFID and the U.K. Government
• Benedict Southworth, Director of the World Development Movement
• Robert Annibale, Global Director of Citigroup microfinance
• John Hillary, Director of War on Want
• Oliver Cumming, Head of Policy at Wateraid
• Sam Bickerseth, Head of Programme Policy at Oxfam
• Professor David Rogers, University of Oxford, and advisor to the E.U. on climate change and infectious diseases

There you go, I've done it!

DEC Gaza appeal

A territory is under blockade and its people are suffering. There is war, and getting help to the suffering will be a challenge. Any humanitarian effort might be exploited by one or both of the combatants.
I'm talking about 1942 when a remarkable group of people met in Oxford. They wished to try help civilians in Greece who were suffering as a result of the Allied blockade. (Greece was at that time being occupied by the Axis powers, 1942 being at the height of World War Two.) Allied policy at the time was that the Axis Powers could jolly well be responsible for feeding the peoples they had conquered. And if they failed, the suffering civilians were perhaps more likely to be sympathetic to the Allied cause. Further, there were obvious risks that the Axis Powers would exploit any relief effort - e.g. distribute the aid to their troops, or only to collaborators. Despite these problems, the Oxford committee was eventually able to arrange for relief to cross the blockade and be distributed successfully. The small committee went on to become Oxfam.

The reason for this history lesson is that I'm still trying to understand the BBC's position on not co-operating with the DEC appeal for Gaza. Their position (statement from the BBC Director General here) boils down to two issues:

1. they can't broadcast the appeal without seeming to take sides
2. they don't believe that the DEC will manage to get the aid through

That is, they are raising just the points that the fledgling Oxfam had to deal with in 1942. And of course it is a recurring theme. Most big crises have some sort of human contribution. Whether there is direct violence (DEC appeals for Darfur, or Kosovo) or whether there is a natural disaster exacerbated by human failings (e.g. Zimbabwe, Burma Cyclone Appeal). After so long It's odd to still be arguing about whether you can "just help these people" and bypass- for that purpose at least - the question of whose fault it all is. That might be well worth asking, but in order to save people's lives that might have to be a separate conversation.

The second point was whether humanitarian aid can actually be delivered. Obviously that is a concern. The DEC, basically says "trust us":

"The DEC launches joint appeals when three criteria are met: overwhelming
humanitarian need, ability by DEC members and their partners to respond and
evidence that the UK public want to help. The Trustees judge that these criteria
are met and are confident that that joint action by DEC Member Agencies is the
best course of action in this crisis."(http://www.dec.org.uk/item/322/248/0/0)

(If you are interested in how the DEC plans to ensure money donated to the appeal is well spent, then the DEC's FAQ page has plenty to read.)

Clearly, there is a role for journalists to investigate whether humanitarian organizations actually do deliver what they promised. I haven't yet seen (and don't expect to see) the BBC or any other news organization exposing the DEC as being unable to deliver the aid it has promised. It seems odd (to say the least) for the BBC to pre-empt such a conclusion by managerial decision.

Far from helping the BBC to remain impartial, the whole sad affair seems only to be helping the lunatic fringe of zionist conspiracy theorists (who of course have never thought the BBC impartial, anyway because conspiracy theorists know that everything is a consipracy).

By the way, the DEC say that the Gaza appeal raised £3,000,000 in the first week. That donation link again: http://www.dec.org.uk/donate_now/

Chair update - January 09

Welcome to our new blog!

All the latest news and information about the group's activities and upcoming events will be posted here, so add this page to your favourites or click on 'follow this blog' (lower right corner) now!

This blog belongs to all of us and will only be useful if people really use it to communicate. Please comment on any posts (bearing in mind that this is a public page), and if you are organising an event or activity you may wish to be set up as an author of posts. If so please respond to the email I sent you linking to this page.

We'd also love to hear what you think of our new blog so that we can improve it.

Best wishes,
Julia

One World Fair - helpers wanted

Our next One World Fair will be in November 2009. However, we’ll need to start planning the event in the spring. As you all know, the One World Fair is our yearly volunteer run event that takes place at the Town Hall, bringing together around 40 stalls from a variety of local or national organisations, mainly Fair Trade, Environmental or Human Rights groups, to raise awareness and to sell lots of ethical goodies in time for the holiday season. The event also involves a vegetarian café which sells a whole lot of yummy quiches and soups and cakes made my our members.

We need a lot of member support on the day to keep this big event running smoothly, and whilst we had a lot of really enthusiastic members helping out this year we could still use more! But aside from the work on the day, we could really use help from more members on the workgroup, which seems to have been shrinking in the last few years. The workgroup meets every month for a nice cosy informal chat, and some distribution of labour. Amongst the main jobs the workgroup does are:

• organising publicity (posters around town, ads in the paper and online, flyers, a library display - starting about 6 weeks before, but particularly important for about two weeks a month before the event) – we could definitely use help with this;
• organising the café (checking we have all the equipment we need, rallying the troups to bake and cook, preparing price lists, liaising with the town hall etc… this really kicks in closer to the event) – this is pretty much under control but extra helpers very welcome;
• organising the stalls (contacting all stall holders from previous year with enrolment form, keeping spreadsheets up to date, collecting fees, getting their blurbs for the directory – though we may not have one this year. This requires bursts of very straightforward work that can be done from home on a computer, starting about three months ahead of the event) - this last job is one that we would really love to have help with as we’re down on workgroup numbers.

So please, particularly if you aren’t already involved with a work group such as the book fair group, and would be interested in getting a little more out of being an OOG member, do get in touch. Even if you can’t commit to taking on any of the bigger jobs, there are lots of little jobs that need doing and we would really appreciate the help. I look forward to hearing from you soon!

Climate Change

2009 is a massive year for campaigning for Oxfam, with the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December. World Leaders have so far failed to step up to the mark, either on reducing carbon emissions, or helping developing countries adapt to the effects of climate change. Oxfam believes that Climate change is the number one threat to overcoming poverty. Droughts, hurricanes, and rising sea levels – these are all already destroying poor people's homes crops and livelihoods. And unless we all work together, things are predicted to get a whole lot worse.
What’s the solution? Action on climate change, on a global scale – now.

So, I’m sure I’m preaching to the converted, but if you haven’t yet signed up to Oxfam’s climate change petition, do so now!

If you haven’t seen it yet, have a look at Oxfam campaigns’ animation Face the Music, which shows how poor people are being hit first and worst by the effects of climate change, even though they've contributed least to it.


Membership fees

You may have seen in lower down in the AGM report that the membership fees have been set at the same rate as last year. Those of you who pay by standing order will already have paid your contribution for 2009, but to those who haven’t, a gentle reminder! Please don’t forget to pay your subs asap to Chris.
Many thanks.

Effortless ways to help Oxfam, #1

If you shop at one of the Midcounties Co-operative stores, consider becoming a member of the Midcounties Co-operative. Your shopping then earns you dividends and you can donate your dividends to a charity. Naturally you would want to choose Oxfam :-) .

Some Midcounties Co-operative members events might be of interest to OOG supporters too: in February 2009 there are "Fair and Square sessions " described as "free fun and interactive sessions for members and colleagues of The Midcounties Co-operative to help everyone understand what ethical shopping [including Fairtrade, a long-standing interest of OOG] really means."

DEC appeal for the Gaza Crisis

As you probably know, the Disasters and Emergencies Committee (DEC) has launched an appeal to assist in the the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. The DEC is a coalition of 13 major humanitarian agencies including Oxfam - they join forces for major disasters so as to respond more effectively. Oxfam also has a page about the crisis here.

You can donate directly to the DEC appeal online

The DEC has of course been in the news because of the decision by the BBC and by Sky TV not to broadcast the appeal for fears about being seen to lack impartiality, a position that has been roundly criticised by many sources (see here and here and here !). Personally, I think that there is no organization more capable of delivering the required assistance impartially than the DEC, and so this is a bizarre vote of no confidence in the most respected humanitarian agencies.

Among other efforts to make the BBC change its mind Avaaz.org have organized a write-in campaign, which you can join from this URL http://www.avaaz.org/en/bbc_charitable_appeal (NB that if you decide to joining the avaaz.org email mailing list, you will receive mail from them about various humanitarian campaigns.)

Street Collection for Zimbabwe Emergency Appeal

On January 17th, the Oxford Oxfam Group organized a street collection in the Westgate Shopping Centre, Oxford. We collected £262.19, to be allocated for Oxfam's Zimbabwe Emergency Appeal . Thanks to Martin Spires and Annie Thomas for organizing this, and of course to the collectors for their hard work on the day!