Charities for Hilary 2006

The NSPCC

The NSPCC (National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children) is the UK's leading charity specialising in child protection and the prevention of cruelty to children. They have been directly involved in protecting children and campaigning on their behalf since 1884. Their work to end cruelty to children includes:

  • Community-based teams and projects throughout the UK
  • A free, 24-hour Child Protection Helpline
  • Campaigning, on issues concerning child protection and the prevention of cruelty.
  • Child protection training and advice
  • Research into the nature and effects of child abuse.
  • Information resources on child protection and related topics
  • Fundraising provides 85% of the money needed to pay for their work.

Oxford Children's Hospital Campaign

Currently children‚s hospital services are delivered from 3 separate sites across the city which means the full range of expertise needed by a child and their family is often unavailable on one site, requiring either the child and their family or the doctors to travel. Usually it is the sick child who has to travel - often having just undergone major surgery. Unfortunately funds were only made available for the relocation of children‚s specialist surgical services from the Radcliffe Infirmary to the John Radcliffe Hospital site, which did not address the fact that the majority of children‚s services would remain in non child oriented facilities. The decision was therefore taken to fundraise the £15m needed to build a dedicated Children‚s Hospital which will open in January 2007.

SeeSaw

For most adults the death of a family member is the single most traumatic experience of their life. For a child the experience can be overwhelming, their security and stability is shaken and life will never be the same. Most experience a period of emotional turmoil following a bereavement, and for around one third of children, these difficulties are severe.
Every year 1500 children in Oxfordshire are bereaved of a parent or sibling. SeeSaw works with these children and their families to provide grief support tailored to the needs of the individual child. We help them find creative ways to remember their loved one, and come to terms with a world where someone they love and depend upon is missing.

Oxford Aid to the Balkans

OXAB is a student-run organisation which has been helping disadvantaged children in the Balkans since 1993. The original trips to Bosnian refugee camps were a great success, and since then, OXAB has expanded to help children in orphanages and other institutions in both Bosnia and Bulgaria, with a view to expanding to Serbia. We sent out over 130 student volunteers from Oxford in 2004, and in 2005 we hope to increase this still further. We also provide funding for an increasing number of long term projects in the region aimed at improving children's lives in the longer term, such as building education centres and buying school and sports supplies.

Hope and Homes for Children

Working in Eastern Europe and Africa, HHC aim to do exactly what their name suggests by giving hope and a loving home to orphaned and abandoned children.
In the areas they target, children are left without hope through crises such as the AIDS pandemic, conflict, war, or genocide, and the government‚s failure to provide sufficiently for them. HHC works to prevent such children being forced into crime, prostitution, or begging in order to survive. They want take children who may be living on the streets, in government camps, in local institutions or in impoverished circumstances, and settle them in a loving home. In Eastern Europe the charity aims to close all state institutions and rehabilitate each child into a family.