Charities for Trinity 2008

KEEN

KEEN (Kids Enjoy Exercise Now) is an organisation of Oxford University and Oxford Brookes University students offering sporting and recreational activities for children and young adults with special needs in Oxfordshire. KEEN offers activities to about 240 children and young adults with special needs (ranging in age from 5 to 30) - the KEEN "athletes". We offer one-to-one and even two-to-one coaching for the young people we work with. Consequently, we are able to tailor each activity to suit the individual within the structure of a close knit group instructed by session leaders. Therefore our athletes have the double benefit of individual attention within a team set up.

The British Heart Foundation

Our vision is of a world in which people do not die prematurely of heart disease. We'll achieve this through pioneering research, vital prevention activity and ensuring quality care and support for everyone living with heart disease. Oxfordshire is one of our key areas of support – we provide research grants, five full-time heart health nurses and equipment for the John Radcliffe Hospital.

Botton Village, The Camphill Trust

Botton is a village in North Yorkshire and home to 280 people, including 130 with special needs, founded on the principles of Rudolph Steiner – namely the belief that both able and special needs residents benefit from living together. The village was the first centre of the Camphill Trust in Britain. It is a working village, where every resident has a job, social events take place regularly, and all residents live in houses with a family and ‘house parents’. All money raised goes towards the purchase or building of new accommodation, so that more residents can be accepted, the maintenance and refurbishment of existing properties, the development and redevelopment of workshops and social facilities. The centre receives no government funding, despite providing a realistic, life-long, alternative solution for mental-health conditions and problems.

Practical Action

Practical Action works with poor communities to help them choose and use technology to improve their lives for today and generations to come. We focus our efforts, skills and resources around four international programmes:

• Reducing vulnerability (natural disasters, conflict and environmental degradation)
• Making markets work for the poor
• Improving access to services
• New technologies

Oxford Development Abroad

ODA is a student-run charity that assists with small-scale, grass-roots and community-initiated development projects in Uganda, Nepal and Morocco. Annually, around 40 volunteers participate in sustainable health, sanitation, and education projects. In recent years projects have included building libraries, schools, water tanks and youth centres in conjunction with the local communities. ODA gives in-depth training to their volunteers and provides high-profile speaker events open to the entire university. The work of ODA makes a crucial difference to people’s lives in Africa and Asia, and the committee and volunteers work hard to build global awareness here in Oxford.