Fashion: Tessa's window display

Our window displays are always changing! Below are some great outfits that we had on display in our window in October;

There will be more posts with images of our window displays coming soon!

Fashion: Oxfam Street Style by clare

The Oxfam Street Style Fashion competition is here. During the fresher's week, we approached a number of people whom we felt had a unique and great sense of fashion. We spotted numerous people with distinct fashion style, took a picture of them and invited them to the store to pick the clothes they fancied. We then took a photo of what they had put together with the clothes in Oxfam.

We spotted Ellie in School during Freshers Week. She had an awesome sense of fashion. Clad in a knit vintage cardigan and carrying a vintage bag, her fashion style made her stand out!

We invited Ellie to the Oxfam store and had her to pick out clothes she liked.

Faux Leather jacket: £10.99

Purple Scarf: £1.99

Boots ( size 5): £6.99

Headband: £2.99

Keep an eye on our blog for more awesome entries! 

Books: Fantastic Fantasy by Arty

Eye of the World by Robert Jordan

One of the best-selling fantasy books to date Wheel of Time is an epic series of books set in a richly developed world almost rival to Tolkien's Middle Earth. Eye of the World is the first in an ongoing series, which is now finally drawing to a close with the final book coming in 2012.  Eye of the World begins the story of Rand Al'Thor's journey to fulfilling his destiny and taking up the fight against a great evil threatening to destroy the world as he knows it. He and his friends must flee everything they've ever known and go beyond their simple farm life into the big world, each of them experiencing their own adventures. Filled with fantastical and gripping action scenes that promise to keep you wanting more, beautifully thought out legends and heroes make this a must have for any fantasy fan. Available in the shop at a pocket saving £2.49

You Are Not Alone by Wambui Mburathi

Cycling from town to Withington and then to the Manchester University South campus I finally located the Barnes Building where the Oxfam day was being held. Quietly I was ushered to a table to find the first speaker talking about his visit to development projects undertaken by Oxfam in South Africa.

The purpose of the talks was to update volunteers on the work and projects undertaken by Oxfam around the world and show how the projects being undertaken are benefiting communities and individuals. Being a new volunteer, I was eager to see how my hours of volunteering made a difference to someone somewhere else in the world.

Looking around I saw a great number of like minded people who have decided to dedicate a part of their lives to volunteering. People varied, from an elderly lady who had been volunteering for the last 30 years to a current student who volunteered in two different stores in different cities.

Seeing all these people in just one room made me realise that on the day I volunteer between the hours of 1:30-5:30, there are several other people in any of the other 700 Oxfam shops sorting clothes, or manning a till driven by the purpose to generate a profit so as to contribute to the eradication of poverty. 

Having a multiplier effect 1 volunteer contributing their time multiplied by the current number of 22,000 volunteers = more funds generated = more lives transformed= one step closer to a world without poverty.

Within last year alone the trading and selling of donated goods generated £76.3m pounds of un-restricted funding. Un-restricted funding has no strings attached and can be distributed to any emergency, development project or campaign. The projects undertaken involve the local communities, creating a sense of ownership, and utilise the wealth of untapped knowledge to create a solution to a problem that is suited to the communities’ circumstance and environment.

For instance in Armenia Oxfam built a storage facility which enabled farm products to be stored for up to 9 months. This meant that farmers were able to keep their fruits fresh until they had acquired a source of transport to deliver their goods to sell at the market. The projects aim to create a long term sustainable solution, so that once the allocated funds have been utilised the communities will continue to benefit from the project without the aid of Oxfam.

The speakers that spoke of their travels to these communities spoke with such touching emotion that you could feel the positive transformations and improved livelihoods of the people photographed. This showed how within the Oxfam model being a volunteer is such an integral part because one small node forms part of a bigger system that collectively makes an impact.

To finish the day there was an engaging Q&A session with (senior management), demonstrating the transparency and accountability of the organisation. The sun was still shinning as we emptied the building and I left with a feeling of solidarity for a justified cause.

Oxfam Shop Conference (Manchester) report

WEARING a T Shirt emblazoned with the words “HIV POSITIVE” may not be your idea of standing up for yourself, but that’s exactly what Molly did to confront the stigma of her condition.

She was pregnant with her second child when doctors told her she had HIV and sent her home with a leaflet. There was no advice and no counselling, nothing to give her hope.

 “I went home and gave away all my precious things then I sat down and waited to die. It was only when my daughter was born that I realised somebody had to bring these children up,” she told Oxfam worker Ian Falkingham.

Molly went back to her neighbours and asked for her furniture back. She then started wearing the T Shirt. Slowly her home became a centre for villagers worried about HIV and she became part of an Oxfam-backed project in South Africa.

“The stigma and vitriol of people with HIV in her village was unbelievable, but Molly stood up and said ‘I’ve got this disease, you are all afraid of it, but I’m not going to lie about who I am’,” said Ian. “She became a one woman support group for women in the community. They would sometimes come in by the back door, but they would come to her house and ask questions.”

            During his visit, Ian also met a doctor running a rape clinic, he told the Oxfam Shop Conference.

“She was the tiredest human being I’ve ever seen in my life. She was tiny and had furrows in her face. She gave girls HIV tests, counselling and advice. She saw 20 to 25 people a day, everyday, on her own. She seemed really pleased to see us. I think it was knowing that somebody cared enough to help.

“My trip to South Africa was the most inspiring thing I’ve done in 24 years with Oxfam, seeing what a huge difference to people’s lives a small amount of money can produce. What we all collectively do is really, really important.”

Ian also urged us to back Oxfam’s GROW campaign.

“The world food system isn’t working. The credit crunch and bank collapse means that children in Phnom Penh are wasting away.”

Cambodia grows rice, which is exported to Thailand for processing. The global recession caused a 50% increase in the price of rice and 63,000 women in the Cambodian textile industry lost their jobs. A UNICEF survey of more than 1000 households in 15 villages found 38% of mothers reported going without food so that others in the family could have enough to eat.

“These women have to buy the rice back from Thailand for the same inflated prices as everywhere else. In Cambodia it’s women and elder sisters who are taking the weight of all this on their shoulders by not eating or eating less to feed their children. They are also borrowing money and getting into debt to buy rice.

“Sign up to the GROW campaign.”

GROW is about making sure everybody has enough to eat and is now focusing on the injustice of land grabs.

Oxfam worker David Hewitt took up the story. He visited Armenia to see Oxfam’s work in action and discovered the super rich had grabbed the best agricultural land and shut down unproductive industries.

“In a world rich in resources, poverty isn’t inevitable, it’s an injustice that must be overcome,” he said.

The majority of the population are subsistence farmers on rocky, barren terrain where it’s difficult to get their produce to market, he said. Families live on £20 per month, which includes money sent home by the men of the family, who often work abroad. Oxfam is helping rural communities with small, but long-term projects such as funding a cold storage facility, which helps 5,000 people keep their produce fresh. Instead of their produce lasting one month, it now lasts nine months and they can sell it at the best price. Villagers share battered Lada’s for the 150km-250km journey to the capital. Previously they had no idea about the price of fruit when they arrived, now an Oxfam worker texts the market prices to the villagers and they make the journey when it's worth it. They are also looking at alternative ways of making money.

“Oxfam primes projects. We don’t want to fund them forever. We are trying to become redundant,” said David.

One example of this was a small medical building Oxfam refurbished and initially paid the salary of a trainee doctor treating common but basic problems such as dysentery, he said. It was valued so much in the village they decided to keep it going themselves. Each family chipped in £1 of their £20 a month. David was told: “We are all poor, we are just trying to help each other out of our situation.”