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page 18, one in five people in the United Kingdom live below the poverty line. One of our main objectives for this issue was to speak directly to the homeless community in Oxford, and also to take a look at the different kinds of care that is offered from charities in Oxford. The interviews on pages 6-9 offer incredible insights into the struggles of the poorest men and women in the city. Anyone who wants to read more stories and insights from the streets of Oxford should also take a look at Sally Murray's review of 'Oxford: One City, Many Voices' on page 14 and consider checking out a copy of the book themselves. Other highlights of this issue include a fascinating interview with Matt Knopp for the careers

section on page 31, Dawn Hollis' account of her experience of working at 'The Gatehouse' on page 26 and Juile Emmings moving study of homelessness in Japan, on page 12. We hope you enjoy this first issue of 'The Summit'!All that remains for me to do is to thank the people who have contributed so much time to this project. In particular, I would like to thank Adam Grodecki, Zoe McCallam and Zoe Savory for helping to start the magazine and investing so much time early on, Adam O Boyle and Hannah MacDiarmid and everyone else at Oxhub for their help and support, Greg Weldon for his help setting up the website, Ghislaine de Give for her valued assistance with editing, and of course, most of all, all of the senior team mentioned to the left for the time they have put towards making this issue a success.

Factbox: The Causes of Homelessness37% - Parents, relatives or friends no longer willing or able to accommodate19% - Breakdown of relationship with partner20% - Loss of private dwelling, including tied accommodation18% - Other4% - Mortgage arrears2% - Rent arrears

Editor’s Note

!

The idea for 'The Summit' magazine first came about in the summer of last year. The founders wanted to create something which we felt did not exist in Oxford: a student publication which dealt exclusively with social and ethical issues and the work of charities. We wanted to inform students more about the work of charities, and about events in Oxford and the world which often are not given coverage by the mainstream media. We also wanted to create a magazine that would not just preach to the converted, but that would engage the wider student population in Oxford with issues that often are merely met with apathy. Finally, we wanted to provide students with simple, direct ways of getting involved with the causes and issues that were explored in the magazine. Since that time various aspects of the magazine, as well as the personal involved, have changed a number of times. However, the aims have remained the same, and the layout of the magazine you see before you is designed to fit with those original aims. It is split up into the three areas of 'Discover it' which includes reviews, interviews and news items, 'Debate it' with debates and opinion pieces provided by students and representatives from charities and social enterprises and 'Do it' which is made up of charity profiles, volunteer opportunities and careers interviews and other ways that students can get involved in charitable work. Over the coming issues, 'The Summit' will try to focus on areas which fall under the categories of poverty, health, conflict, education, rights and law, the environment and social entrepreneurship. Every issue will focus one area specifically. Whilst not every single article in the magazine will relate directly to that one area, the majority will, so that the facts, the debates and how to get involved in that one area can all be explored in the same place. For this, our first issue, the focus is on homelessness. Homelessness seemed like an appropriate subject for our first issue because it is something, as inhabitants of Oxford, that stares us in the face everyday. And yet the extent of homelessness and poverty in Britain in general is often a surprise to those who see the statistics for the first time. Britain is a rich country, and a Socialist one, with a Labour Government that has been in power for over eleven years. Yet despite this, as Louie Fooks, of Oxfam points out on

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homelessness

February 2010 Volume 1 Issue 1

1

Discover ItDown and OutInterviews with homeless people

4-56-9

Homelessness in Tokyo

12-13

Debate ItBack and Forth16-17

Interview with Oxfam

18

Do ItProfile of The Gatehouse

Careers in social consulting

10-11 Life of Ugandan refugees

14-15 Book Review

19 Interview with The Gatehouse

Aung San Suu Kyi20

21 Climate change

Drones22-23

Profile of OxHop

Interview with HAG

Events and opportunities

24-25

28-29

30

31

32-33

26-27

Best of

Editor-in-Chief: Gervase Poulden'Discover it' editor: Matt Alkaitis'Debate it' editor: Neha Thirani'Do it' editor: Aditi SubramaniamHead of Business: Sue EllisBusiness team: Anna GienckeEmma KingDesigner:Katherine Tandler

Like what you see? Get involved!

Interested in writing or editing, contact:

editor@thesummitoxford.comInterested in designing, contact: designer@thesummitoxford.comInterested in helping us work out our finances, contact:

business@thesummitoxford.com

Or if we’ve simply “peaked” your interest, visit us online at www.thesummitoxford.com

Staff

3>>articles in grey form are featured under the issue’s theme: homelessness

4

Disc ver it

employment, previous permanent residence, or the permanent residence of relatives in the district in order to qualify for the general housing policy, the Home Choice Scheme. Under this policy, landlords accept a deposit paid by the Council, in a move to make private housing more accessible to homeless people. Prior to 2003 when this policy was first implemented homeless people would be interviewed by the Council, and re-housed only if the Council was duty-bound to do so, then sent to a squalid Bed and Breakfast.

The Local Connection scheme came into force as part of the Housing Act of 1996. It is a national policy, implemented largely where there are metropolitan housing crises. Iain Devenney, a Private Sector Housing Officer in the Home Choice Scheme commented, “It is a successful scheme, as Oxford is a small city that lots of people want to come to, what with students, professionals, academics and local people. We have to use Local Connection as a last resort”.

Concerns about arbitrary implementation of the policy appear to pervade opinion among the homeless in central Oxford. Mark, originally from South Wales, said “the [Local Connection] system is much

and OutBy: Camilla Tuner

How often do you find yourself rushing down Cornmarket Street when you’re late for a lecture, a debate or a haircut? How often do you, in your haste, accidentally bump into someone--and how often is that someone a Big Issue seller?

Whether it’s Cornmarket Street, Broad Street, George Street or High Street, one cannot fail to notice the presence of homelessness in Oxford. The City Council prides itself on having some of the best facilities for homeless people in the Southeast of England. They boast that they have already met their targets for 2010, having reduced the number of people in temporary accommodation to around 280, down from 1,500 back in 2003. Why then, is there so much upset and anger among the Big Issue sellers in Oxford’s city centre? After speaking directly to some of Oxford’s homeless, the answer seems to be the “Local Connection” scheme. Though on the surface, this scheme appears to be a story of success, both financially and practically, it has also gained a reputation among the homeless for using arbitrary criteria to determine access to Oxford’s housing programs.

The Local Connection initiative requires Oxford’s homeless to demonstrate previous

Down

worse here than elsewhere. In other places, you are assessed according to your needs--I’m a British Citizen yet I get no help in this city”. A qualified plasterer, Mark is saving up for a bond, and plans to leave Oxford by Christmas “I would have stayed here longer, but as I’m not wanted, I might as well move on”.

Carl, a Big Issue seller on Cornmarket Street said, “Local Connection is a big point of contention, it causes so much upset. Put it this way--it causes grown men to cry”. Originally from Dunstable, Carl has been on the streets for seven months. Although technically not qualifying for Local Connection, he explains that he has been granted an exception. He commented, “If they can make an exception for me, they should make it for everyone. It’s an unfair system. Homeless is homeless, it doesn’t matter if you come from Oxford or not, everyone should be treated the same.”

Gary, who has been on the streets since he was twelve, added “the Local Connection system is just not on. I arrived in Oxford just before it, by three weeks. There are plenty of problems--it’s fairly random, and it only takes into account relatives, and not friends. This is definitely the biggest issue at the

Discover It

moment, it just sweeps the problem under the carpet.”It seems that just as much frustration is channeled towards the implementation of the policy as the policy itself. The allegation that it is an arbitrary system is apparently supported by Carl’s situation, for he admits to having been granted an exception. Devenney refutes these claims, saying, “We use Local Connection very fairly. Exceptions are made only for people fleeing domestic violence as we cannot send them back to that situation.” He explained that someone applying to housing in Oxford who came from outside of the area would be told to “go back to where you came from”. Families are pointed to the social services, and single people are pointed to the night shelter.

In response to the accusation that foreign nationals are given priority over British nationals, Iain said “This is clearly not true, and certainly not policy. There is a misapprehension about this; going back seven or eight years, Oxford had a large asylum seeker population--there was a general feeling that they were jumping the queue. In fact they were being housed by Social Services under the Dispersion Programme. This bred the rumour that if you were foreign you’d get a house. This is an urban myth more than anything else.”

Andrew sells the Big Issue outside the Westgate Centre and qualifies for the Local Connection scheme, yet still feels it needs improving. “You don’t want an open door but it’s unfair not to help people who are homeless. A half-way house is needed”. It seems the allures of Oxford--its high-brow, wealthy locals and its large student population--make the town a highly attractive prospect for the homeless, while at the same time leading to a saturated housing market. The Home Choice Scheme may be able to dispel the myths of arbitrary implementation that infuse anger in the homeless people of Oxford; they may be ahead of their targets and financially sound, but the fact remains that it is only the lucky few who are included in its success.

in Jericho and Cowley

Big Issue Fact Box:Vendor Strategies and Buyer Responses in Oxford

The Big Issue has been published and sold for 17 years. It reaches almost 700,000 people in Britain every year and helps roughly 2,500 homeless vendors to earn an income. However, the Big Issue is not a charity, but rather a social business. Vendors purchase the Big Issue at 75 Pence for a copy and decide for themselves how many copies they think they can sell. Vendors with the most creative promotion strategies can sell up to 15 copies an hour and 70 per day in Oxford. Some of the most successful strategies include joking marriage proposals to pedestrians or throwing a copy in front of a potential client and announcing: “You’ve dropped your Big Issue!” Even though outgoing and assertive strategies seem to pay off, the majority of the sellers seem to remain rather passive. While almost clinging to the magazine, many vendors make only timid eye contact while offering greetings to pedestrians. Vendors relying on this strategy, tend to sell only one copy or less per hour, and only 5 to 10 magazines per day. That adds up to a meagre daily income of four to seven pounds if customers only pay the suggested selling price of one pound fifty.

Author’s Note: The numbers and findings presented in this article are derived from 9 observations and 7 interviews conducted as part of a (non-representative) qualitative research project in November 2010 and from the Big Issue Website.

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6

Interview by: Megan Rhea

Summit: How did you come to be homeless? Can you describe a day in your life at that time?

Homeless Person: I grew up in a small town in eastern Wales with my family, four brothers, two sisters and my mom. When I was about 19, I was really struggling to fit in, not only in school but life in general, especially when it came to my family. My dad was never around: I still don’t know who he is, and my mum just used to drink. Being the youngest, all my brothers and sisters just ignored me. I dropped out of college at 19 and was living in a youth home. I don’t think my mum or my siblings even tried to find me when I didn’t show up.

A heroin dependency makes it difficult for forty-six year old John Bailey to keep a job, pay rent, or maintain stable relationships. Consequently, Bailey, who also suffers from arthritis, diabetes and seizures, has spent several years living on the streets. During these years, he would sleep under park benches, covering himself with discarded newspapers to stay warm and hidden. On colder nights he might venture into a shelter, which offered heat, but which also required him to engage in the ‘one-eyed sleep’, a state of semi-alertness prompted by the fear of having one’s possessions stolen. Bailey has also been severely beaten both in the shelters and in the city parks. Presently, a rehabilitation program has helped Bailey to remain drug free for several months and he has a job of sorts. But he is wary of taking his current life for granted. ‘This is not my first time rising,’ he admits, recalling past bouts of being sober and housed. ‘Raw existence can be only a few slips away.’

John Bailey is the type of person many people picture when they hear the word homeless. Transients who are substance abusers, mentally ill, or very sick, often referred to as the ‘chronic homeless’ may spend years in a recurring cycle of illness, deepening poverty, institutionalization, rehabilitation attempts, and homelessness. Some remain transients for life. Increasingly, families and their children are joining the ranks of the destitute. An economic recession, stagnant wages, layoffs, and rising unemployment coupled with skyrocketing housing prices are pushing more and more working families onto the streets or into temporary shelters. In many cities the number of homeless families is the highest that charities have seen in a decade. ‘It’s embarrassing to say that the populace of homeless people is up,’ says, Edward Hami, head of a local charity, ‘But it’s better to face the truth than to try to conceal the extent of the problem.’

Face to Face

profi le

encounter#1

By Anant Jani

and a pillow.

Summit: What was the worst or scariest thing you’ve encountered on the streets?

Homeless Person: Being on the streets is hard enough but doing it with a severe medical condition made it worse, I developed breast cancer at the age of 26. Trying to get treatment was difficult without a fixed abode. I had no means of support and was at mercy of welfare for a long time. One of the worst things I encountered while living on the streets was after surgery being sent back to the shelter for the night to recover as they thought I was okay. I got to the shelter at 5 PM and asked a friend to wake me at 7 for dinner. I went into shock and my temperature shot to near 97 [degrees]. 999 was called and I was taken to hospital where I stayed for over 3 weeks.

Summit: What can/should the government do to help homeless people, in your opinion?

Homeless Person: People need to get more involved. Homeless people are just that people, human beings, just like you and me, who have rights and feelings and dreams. Though something has landed them where they are today, they still deserve to be treated with respect as a person. For the government, we need to take care of our own here at home before we reach out to everyone else in the world.

7

Discover ItSummit: Can you tell us about your educational background?

Homeless Person: I never really enjoyed school. I was picked on by the other children and even my teachers since I couldn’t read properly because of my lisp. I did try going to college but I felt like a nobody there. I didn’t have any friends. I just came, went to lessons and then went home. So, I dropped [out of ] college at the age of 19.

Summit: Can you tell us about your life today (friends, career, family, volunteering etc)?

Homeless Person: After leaving Wales I ended up in Birmingham where I shoplifted to survive. Eventually I’d been banned from most of the city centre so I ended up hitchhiking to London. It still surprises me that no one ever asked me why I was shoplifting, none of the staff or the police. Slowly I drifted to Oxford as the charities were a lot better here, or so I’d heard from my homeless friends. I’m currently learning gardening at St. Andrews [a local church of England Church] and I get the occasional job or two, which makes me happy and pays for the shelter. Family, I have no real family, I haven’t seen them for over 30 years.

Summit: What advice would you give to teens and young adults who are either homeless or thinking about running away?

Homeless Person: Some words of advice to those teens living on the streets or thinking of running away: talk to someone, if that is a counselor, a friend, or teacher or whoever. You may think that life on the streets will be better but it only makes things worse. It’s a cold, dark, miserable existence. I only have one friend, Harry [cuddles her dog].

Summit: What was it like living in a shelter? What were the best or worst things about it?

Homeless Person: Living in shelters is not easy. Trying to get along with others who you don’t know can cause problems, not to mention trying to follow shelter rules. Some that I stayed in were only open at night, which left you at the mercy of the weather and elements during the day. The best thing is though that they provide relative security

One of the worst things I encountered while living on the streets was after surgery being sent back to the shelter for the night...I went into shock and my temperature shot to near 97 [degrees].

8

Summit: Given that so many people have had problems getting help from the local authorities, why do you think Oxford has such a rigorous ‘Local Connection’ scheme?Mark: I suppose to maintain the high brow shine of Oxford. Guess they thought if they made it too easy, they’d just be overrun.

Summit: Why did Oxford appeal to you as a place to come to live?Mark: I love the architecture, I was in Bath for two years, and that was just the same. I was meant to be passing through and just ended up staying. Often I don’t know where I’m going, it’s a bit of a ‘pin in the map’ job.

Summit: How do you feel student’s generally tend to react to you?Mark: I’d say it was about a 50/50 split, between those who are sympathetic and hostile. I have quite a few regular student customers, but not as much this term as last year.

Summit: What’s your experience of Oxford as a place to be homeless compared to where else you lived?Mark: The system here is a lot worse than a lot of other places. Elsewhere people are assessed as to their needs, not their local connection.

Summit: How do you find the police tend to react to you? Do they bother you much?Mark: The police are sort of a double edged sword, but a lot of them have negative stereotypes in their mind about homeless people. If you keep out of trouble they tend to leave you alone, and my only vice is that I occasionally smoke a bit of weed.

Summit: How did you become homeless?Mark: I’m a fully qualified plasterer about two years ago, worked hard, paid my taxes, all legal and legit and everything, had a two bed house with my wife and daughter. And, basically turned out my wife was sleeping with my cousin. I obviously couldn’t kick my wife and daughter out so I left. Ended up having a nervous breakdown, started drinking, lost my job, went to a mental hospital, and well, here I am. It’s hard to step back on the ladder you know.

Mark, 28encounter #2

encounter #4

Interviews by: Anant Jani and Hannah White

Summit: What’s your experience of the Local Connection scheme?Andrew: I qualify, I’ve just started living in temporary housing, but I think it’s quite silly really. I mean, everyone’s entitled to somewhere to live.

Summit: How do students react to you?Andrew: I don’t notice any difference between them and the general public, but it just depends on the person, a lot of people have preconceptions about Big Issue sellers, like we’re all junkies or something, but we’re all trying to earn a legit living.

Summit: What about the police?Andrew: They’re generally pretty understanding; they never hassle me for no reason.

Summit: What improvements do you think could be made to the system for homeless people?Andrew: There are lots and lots. More hot food is important.

Andrew, 23

Summit: Why did you decide to come and live in Oxford?Carl: I knew it had good facilities, and I got given a local connection. I haven’t got one, but they made a very rare exception for me.

Summit: What do you think of the local connection scheme? Carl: It can be very arbitrary, like, they made an exception for me, but homeless is homeless, wherever you’re from in England. I’m not racist, but sometimes foreign nationals are treated better than UK citizens, and that’s not right, people from the UK should have priority. Everyone thinks the system is a problem, even the people who qualify.

Summit: What’s your experience of the Oxford public?Carl: Generally good. I’ve had good experiences of students, bad experiences are more from kids, but I think that’s just ignorance and want of more awareness. This time of year is horrible, Christmas and all that, but the people of Oxford are very kind, extremely kind, it’s a very decent place, very decent people.

Summit: Do you think ignorance is the main problem?Carl: I think the problem is understanding why people become homeless, I mean, we’re not all drug addicts, you know. Drugs and drink aren’t the problem, it’s mental health. The mental health facilities in this country are disgraceful, there aren’t enough trained staff. Mental health is the biggest problem, that needs to be addressed first.

encounter #3 Carl, 42

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Summit: How long have you been in Oxford for?Gary: 3 years. I’ve actually just moved into supported housing about a month ago, and that’s going pretty well.

Summit: Would you describe yourself as homeless?Gary: Well, I’m not homeless as in sleeping on the streets anymore, but you don’t just go from being homeless to not homeless, just because you’ve got a place to sleep. I still don’t have a home. And I could lose my housing at any point if someone more needy comes along.

Summit: How did you become homeless?Gary: Been on the streets since I was 12. I was an awkward teenager kicked out my parents. Had addiction problems and all. Guess it’s the standard story really.

I was in Cambridge for 15 years, then Bournemouth, now here.

Summit: How do Oxford and Cambridge compare from the point of view of being homeless?Gary: Cambridge is better, it’s got more open space, Oxford is more buildings. And the police have a more relaxed approach, here you’re not allowed to sell the Big Issue after 10pm, and in Cambridge you could.

Summit: And what about the students in Oxford, how do they relate to you?Gary: Students are pretty good, but it’s more down to the council to take an active role.

Summit: What about your experience of the local connection scheme?Gary: Lots of people here have problems with it. It seems very arbitrary what your local connection is. I’ve got lots of friends here but no family, so I miss out.

encounter #5 Gary, 39

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life in a refugee camp in Uganda

By: Giulio Morello

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Kampala (Uganda), August 2009. Kyaka II refugee settlement lays on a vast area amidst the lush and green-painted hills of western Uganda. This is home to roughly 16,000 refugees, most of whom come form the DRC, Sudan and Rwanda. These people are part of the 31 million under the formal responsibility of the UNHCR: the size of an average European country, a country without borders and without official representatives.Joseph has been living in Kyaka II for nine years, his degree is not recognised in Uganda so he cannot work. He sleeps under a hut that he made himself with wood and mud and covered with a piece of white plastic provided by the United Nations, just like any other hut around the camp. I ask him how he arrived in Kyaka II: he escaped on foot for 500 Kilometers through the Congolese forest; half of his family was taken away by war and he lost contact with the other half after a fire destroyed the hut he in lived in before, burning his address book and mobile phone. Joseph tells his story calmly, as if he is talking about someone else.

'A potentially explosive mix of victims and murderers, rapists and innocents'

Central-Eastern Africa has been hit by two of the most violent conflicts in the recent history of the continent: the Rwandan genocide of 1994 and the Second Congo War, which, not surprisingly, is best known as Africa's World War. As a result, Kyaka II, like other camps in the area, is a melting pot of people from different backgrounds, languages and cultures. It is a potentially explosive mix of victims and murderers, rapists and innocents. The overall community does not seem to decrease, as recent fights in the North Kivu and in Kenya following the 2007 elections are securing fresh inflows of refugees. What strikes me more about refugees' life is the extreme instability they are forced into. In one of the tiny villages of the settlement live some Rwandese families. Their kids are still at home at the time they are supposed to be at a camp school in a classroom with one teacher and one hundred pupils. I ask their parents about it. “We are waiting to be repatriated, it makes no sense to pay the school fees if we are going back to Rwanda soon.” The problem is that none have been told their day of repatriation; it could be two months or two years. Hence, for two months or for two years, their kids are not going to school.The existence of refugees entirely depends on the intermittent and unpredictable repatriation arrangements between the government of their home country, the Ugandan officials and the United Nations. Planning a future in Uganda is impossible for them: finding a job outside the camp (the necessary condition to exit from it) is too hard, and even harder is achieving Ugandan citizenship. So, most of them remain inside the settlement, where at least they have their food ration. Unfortunately, for many of them, life inside the camp can turn into a hell.

'It is no surprise then, that all Ugandan refugee settlements are built next to military bases.'

Safety problems are common inside the camp, together with rapes, robberies and arsons. For this reason, the settlement administration was recently entrusted to a military commandant, who gets his wage both from the Ugandan government and from the UNHCR. It is no surprise then, that all Ugandan refugee settlements are built next to military bases.Outside the commandant office I meet Baunda, a Congolese man from the South Kivu who has been living in Kyaka II for a whole fifteen years. The camp, he tells me, is like a prison without locks and gates, where life is in a state of oblivion. I dare to ask him to compare his life in the Congo with the one in the camp. This is his answer: “I had to make a choice: staying in the Congo and dying suddenly or escaping and dying slowly. I chose to die slowly.”

dyingslowly

Discover It

12

After nearly four months of living in Tokyo, Japan’s neon-clad, frenetic capital I had not seen a single homeless person. Logic dictates that like any capital city, there is a homeless populous, but why wasn’t it visible to me, the roaming tourist? I eventually unearth estimates that 5,000 homeless people live day-to-day in tarpaulin-tent accommodation, known in Japanese as ‘blue mansions’. In concentrated pockets around the city, small clusters of plastic homes can be found, tucked under foliage in municipal parks, arranged in the shadowy eaves of railway arches and lining the banks of the Sumida river. In fact, some of the river residents have been established there for so long they can be seen on GoogleEarth; bright blue beacons the city administrators would perhaps prefer to sensor. It is hard to quantify how many countless other homeless-nomads are constantly moving around the streets of Tokyo, changing location to try and invoke better fortunes. Other mobile, homeless persons, particularly young are taking their places at the newest en-mode hotels; the reclining seats of 24hr internet cafes. It startles me to find that in Japanese society, homelessness is viewed as ‘shameful’ and the homeless are characterised by general society as ‘failures’ or ‘useless’. Not only does this negative opinion appear to be the view of those with homes and jobs, but also it can be the view of the homeless themselves, for Japan is a proud nation where pride and appearance is very highly valued. It is therefore common to find feelings of low self-esteem, depression and suicidal tendencies in the homeless sphere. Many capital cities have directly linked the recent global economic turmoil to increases in homeless numbers, but in Tokyo the situation is more complex. After unprecedented economic growth and success in the late 1980’s, the 1990’s heralded widespread bankruptcy as prices finally deflated and ‘the bubble burst’. For many, once guaranteed work (for example in construction), came to an end and since then sensitive,

temporary working has become ‘the norm’. The government don’t seem to have recognised the precariousness of the temporary employment culture. Many workers are left with unsecured futures as temporary jobs do not come with the same unemployment insurances and benefits as long-term positions. It appears to be all too easy to fall into homelessness, at the mercy of the world’s highest house prices; a break in employment continuity or ill health is just enough for people to slip through the cracks in society and land on the streets, no solid social policy or governmental safety net provided. It is estimated that two-thirds of the homeless community in Tokyo are men aged 50-65 years old. Some of these men have been homeless since the problems of the 1990s, losing their families and identity in the 18 years that have prevailed. Others are newer to the homeless statistic, more temporary workers victim to the recent global economic turmoil. NGOs and other outreach organisations are now reporting that ever increasing volumes of young mothers are living below the poverty line or have taken to the streets as well, another shunned section of society. It has shocked me to the core that a developed country that I previously conceived as so advanced has such a vague understanding of their own homeless populous. There seems to be little acknowledgement by society or government that public policy issues and bureaucracy consign these masses to the streets, with little chance of reprieve. The social benefit systems that do exist are complex and arduous to apply for. Few people seem to know their entitlements, or how to apply. These schemes are ill-advertised to the homeless and downtrodden and often come with caveats and conditions that stop people from applying at all. It is reported that applicants to the city re-housing schemes may only stay in the cheap accommodation provided for a maximum of one or two months. If they cannot find work in this

neither seennorheardby Julie Emmings homelessness in Japan’s capital

heard

Discover It

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stocks from businesses, contributing them to their food bank, whilst eliminating the high cost of scrapping excess stock to the business. Second Harvest utilise the food in several ways. Stocks may be distributed from their main warehouse to satellite food banks and soup kitchens in the area. A ‘Harvest Pantry’ has been organised where care packages comprised of rice, vegetables and other staple ingredients are distributed to families, homes for the elderly and orphanages who have expressed the need for help. Also, a weekly hot meal programme is prepared on site by volunteers, then cooked, in situ, in municipal parks to supply the homeless directly with the nutrition they so desperately need. Second Harvest Japan stress that their NGO is not simply a soup kitchen, they are striving to raise awareness of the homeless problems of Japan, whilst setting up the infrastructure needed to sustain a food supply chain to those in need. Second Harvest appeal to businesses and benefactors to donate funds, food or time to help establish and ingrain this food banking system in Japanese society. It speaks volumes that to date the greatest support has come from international businesses such as Heinz or Morgan Stanley, where these concepts are already familiar, however Japanese companies are now starting to support these programmes as well. So my investigations have led me to the homeless populations of Tokyo, a population with a very different attitude to that which I am used to in Britain. Few drug or alcohol habits persist in these populations, just an overwhelming sense of low-self esteem and abandonment by their own establishment. Equally alien to me is that these people simply seem to accept their fate, silently and without resistance, coping as best they can through creating their own makeshift society. They don’t ask for help, they won’t approach you in the street and you may not even see them at all. However, there is hope that through the work of NGOs such as Second Harvest, that one day homeless people may be reintegrated into society. All but forgotten now, these ghosts may become visible again, once attitudes, recognition and social policies in Japan begin to change. My assumptions have been very wrong with regard to Japan, indeed they may be the pinnacle of technological innovation and be world-leaders in many areas, however they are decades behind western countries in many other ways, collective concern for welfare certainly being one.

short time, they are ejected; once back on the streets with no registered address, re-employment is virtually impossible (a situation similar to that in Britain). Previous governmental initiatives such as ‘environmental beautification’ of central Tokyo have neatly swept the homeless populations into the fringes of the city, where they remain. Many homeless communities survive perhaps most successfully in this way, sharing what resources they do have, cooking and creating a sense of community amongst themselves. Their community spirit is no doubt invaluable to their chances of survival in the wake of such rejection by their own authorities. One may question how these tented villages sustain themselves. I would suggest that it is the introduction of NGOs into Japan a few years ago that has made homelessness for so many, a viable option rather than a death sentence. For many years, tiny fragmented soup kitchen operations run by churches and missions kept the small numbers of homeless alive, however after the escalation of homeless numbers in the 1990s a western food banking system has probably been the saviour of many souls. NGOs were an unknown concept in Japan until very recently. Introduced into Japan by immigrants and ex-pats, newly founded charitable organisations and volunteer operations are now trying to change the way citizens see minority groups and are beginning to create a sense of civil society at last. One such pioneering NGO in Tokyo is Second Harvest Japan. Finally (after much bureaucracy) legally recognised as an NGO in 2003, Second Harvest Japan has been laying foundations to establish a proper food banking and distribution infrastructure in the Tokyo and Kanto region. Incredibly sensitive to the aesthetics of food stocked in shops some 6000 tons of food per day is disposed of in Tokyo alone, most of which is entirely consumable. Second Harvest Japan intervene and remove these ‘unpleasing’

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Oxford, the “City of Dreaming Spires”, boasts a sparkling heritage, emanates beauty and seems to burst with opportunity and potential. “Oxford: One City, Many Voices” does not seek to tarnish this golden image, but does offer valuable embellishment and suggestions for repair work. The book is a space for Oxford’s homeless to present Oxford as they know it, alongside accounts from professional writers. By giving a voice to the city’s most underprivileged inhabitants, it grants readers a glimpse of a far fuller, more colourful and altogether more interesting cityscape. For anyone who lives in Oxford, with an interest in the full scope of the human experience, this book is an enriching and highly recommended read.

The fifty authors of “Oxford: One City, Many Voices” have taken fifty different approaches to the content and style of their pieces. Contributions range in length from two lines to three pages, and in content from personal accounts of becoming and remaining homeless to observations about Oxford’s people and culture, poems about love, death and the new bus system. As the varied accounts are not organised by style or theme, the rapid shifts between form and focus from one piece to the next can be somewhat disorientating. The book is therefore best read a few entries at a time, leaving good time for

reflection between readings.It is, however, quite refreshing to find a book

that happily places incongruous accounts side by side; divergent perspectives are presented as equally important, without the suggestion that they are equally accurate, and the reader is invited to find the pearls of truth encased within each account. For most contributors, their piece is the only chance they’ll ever have to put their perspectives into print, and speculating as to the motivation behind each writer’s authorial choices is a challenge and a joy offered to the thoughtful reader.

I had hoped “Oxford: One City, Many Voices” would explore how people become homeless, and it does indeed offer certain insights into that vastly complex problem. Some writers talk of drugs, but most who do seem to have adopted the habit since becoming homeless, as one

explains, “because of how soul-destroying life can be”. Some writers became homeless after fleeing abusive partners. Others got into debt. One submitted a tenancy form to the council too late. It becomes unmistakably clear that there are tears in the fabric of our society through which anyone can fall, if they’re unlucky enough. The blameless are not, as we like to believe, always caught by the safety net of our welfare state. As Martin, another homeless man, observes, sometimes, “things happen out of your control, like that’s the way the cookie crumbles”.

Of course, many people in particular social spheres in Oxford are blessed with happiness to spare. This book expresses that joy as well. The

One City,By: Sally Murray Any Voices?

photo courtesy of: oxfordgatehouse.org

Review

Discover It

15

Oxford most of us recognise, the “landscape of first times and opportunities”, is sweetly depicted by Chris Sykes of the Oxford Times: “Marriage, opportunity and happiness”, he writes, “is what Oxford means to me”. To many, however, “the university is just walls”. Philip, on the homeless waiting list for eighteen years, recently diagnosed with epilepsy and still fifteen places from the top of the housing list remarks that, “you have got to be ill to be housed in this place; it’s a bit sad, isn’t it?” Many accounts within this book are shocking and upsetting, and it becomes understandable that Damien, after reading Guy Sajer’s “Forgotten Soldier”, draws parallels between his life on the streets and that of someone at war, citing, “the way you expect things through brutalisation. You do things because you are brutalised”. There is an immense and absurd gulf between the life-chances of Oxford’s residents. This book, though modest, stands at the edge of that gulf and bears unmistakeable witness to it.

“One City, Many Voices” is not, however, a wholly depressing read. It is a secret peephole into people’s lives and therefore bound to be entertaining at times. I laughed out loud as Sister Gabriel Benedict ASSP cheerfully contrasted her convent’s offer of spiritual recovery with Cowley Road’s, “crack houses and gangsters”, remarking that, “both are exciting places, each with a different ethos”. Contributors like Thea and Addie are bound to make the Peeping Toms smile, with the opening words “As soon as we got off the ferry, we knew we wanted to be here because we are psychics”. Philip Pullman also writes a magical piece, making a heartfelt plea for the protection of our architectural and cultural heritage: “[W]e allow shops of surpassing ugliness owned by companies of ferocious greed to sell items of stupendous worthlessness in order to pay rents of towering magnitude, and thus force out the small, the interesting, the old, the not-quite-so-profitable. Our ancestors will be waiting for us with sharpened knives”. It’s brilliant, and its worth

is multiplied tenfold by its presentation just pages after the comments of an anonymous contributor: “All this medieval muck is dead and gone forever… Fifteenth-century buildings? Pull them all down!” Even the contributors who express anger and frustration often do so in a style so spirited that pity is out of the question. The book’s contributors breathe into it a humour, style and sense of lively debate that ensures the seriousness of its contents does detract from the pleasure of reading it.

It’s tempting, in trying to draw a conclusion out of this diverse book, to cite Priscilla Tolkien’s contribution. Priscilla now works with some of Oxford’s least fortunate citizens as a probation officer, but personally enjoyed a very privileged upbringing in the city. “And now”, she writes, “I am conscious of holding both dark and light

together: I delight in the glories of art and culture, of community and heritage, but these are shadowed by the presence of the homelessness on the streets and of strangers seeking asylum in our midst. I feel intensely the sadness of change and the destruction of the environment of so much I have loved, but I am totally blessed in the pleasures of home”. It strikes me as the most all-encompassing insight offered by any contributor. But then, reading “Oxford: One City, Many Voices”, it also strikes me that what each person identifies as “the real Oxford” is a product of their own unique experience of life. Each piece in this book offers, or conceals, a glimpse of one of these unique lives. The book shows us to the peephole. What to make of what we see there is left for us to decide.

It becomes unmistakably clear that there are tears in the fabric of our society through which anyone can fall, if they’re unlucky enough. The blameless are not, as we like to believe, always caught by the safety net of our welfare state.

Rebecca Ratcliffe argues that the government needs to smarten up its

policy on housing and the rights of homeless people, whilst the cynic argues that alcoholism

and drug addictions need to be treated as mental health problems, and the highest priority should be forcibly treating

these illnesses amongst the homeless community.'

legislation. Whilst Scotland’s housing provision is centred on the belief that accommodation is an ‘enforceable right’, England drags its feet, reserving assistance only for those in so-called ‘priority need’. Individuals who do not appear, on paper, to be especially vulnerable are consequently pushed to the bottom of the pile, inevitably neglected by the system. Currently, if a person becomes homeless in England they should approach their local authority in the hope of finding accommodation. In order to be eligible for this assistance, however, it is necessary for them to meet a series of strict criteria: they must firstly be able to prove some connection to the local area, evidence must be given that they are unintentionally homeless and finally, they must meet the government’s specification in order to qualify as a person in ‘priority need for accommodation’. According to statistics released by Crisis, the national charity for single homeless people, in 2008 over 130,000 households in England made a homelessness application. Of those, only 48% (57,500) were accepted as being owed the main homelessness duty and therefore entitled to housing; it is this number which the Government employs as its headline figure for homelessness. Those who do not pass the various tests laid down by the policy makers are frequently ignored by local authorities who are under no legal obligation to provide accommodation. If you are a single homeless person (with no dependent children, for example) then it is unlikely that you will receive help unless you are deemed especially vulnerable. Whilst some local authorities may still provide such individuals with housing,

16

By: Rebecca Ratcliffe A Dangerous Complacency

Debate it

The Labour government is ever keen to remind us of its past success in reducing the levels of homelessness since 1997. Their current claim that across the country there are only 500 rough sleepers is however, optimistic if not dangerous in its complacency.The announcement this month, for instance, of government plans to remove ring-fenced funding for the Supporting People programme, which offers housing support to young people and adults, severely undermines Labour’s promises to remain committed to tackling homelessness. The government may have met its previous targets but the developments we have witnessed since 1997 will be worthless unless ministers follow up and move beyond such achievements. The count of rough sleepers is down; however, there are still many unnecessary barriers preventing people from securing settled accommodation. The government continues to fall short of its obligations, failing to ensure that all homeless individuals are able to access the help and support they need to move off the streets, not temporarily, but permanently. The 5-yearly report submitted by UN’s Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, published earlier this year, was concerned at the extent of homelessness and the chronic shortage of affordable housing in England. It was similarly unimpressed by the fundamental opinion of the UK government: that rights, such as that to adequate housing are mere ‘principles and values’ which have not been incorporated into the domestic legal order. This attitude was contrasted somewhat unfavourably with Scottish law which, after the introduction of the Homelessness Scotland Act 2003, aims to create a legally enforceable right to housing by a target date of 2012. It is an embarrassment that the Scottish Homelessness Act is unmatched by English >>continued on pg. 34

Debate It

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a year per person in some cases. One of the few people that 'The Cynic' agrees with is on this issue is John Bird, founder of 'The Big Issue'. Bird, who lived on the street himself for many years, claims that 'What nobody wants to acknowledge is that 90 per cent of people in and around homelessness have drink and drug problems. And 90 per cent of that figure are people who cannot control it.' These are the problems that have to be dealt with, and the only way to do that is to recognise that alcoholism and addictions to drugs are forms of mental illness and should be treated as such by being included in the Mental Health Act. If this were done, these people could receive the necessary care for them to have any chance of re-entering society. It would be possible to 'section' those people suffering from addictions to alcohol and drugs and to bring them off the streets and into the care of mental health experts. This should be done - forcibly if necessary. people who suffer from addictions are often not able to help themselves. The government should not only be changing the law, but it should also be reallocating funds to treat the causes of homelessness. If just half the amount that the government wastes on housing and temporary care were spent instead on creating more mental health clinics there would be longer lasting results. It sounds like an extreme course of action, but what is the alternative? The answer is that sympathy from the public will continue to fund the drug and alcohol addictions of people on the street. Do not kid yourself – that is where your money that you give to beggars goes. People who are placed in government housing, who are still suffering from addiction will simply continue to live the same destructive lifestyle, the lifestyle of a homeless alcoholic. They will be doomed – with your help - to an in increased dependence on the state and condemned to a life of misery. In which they can find no employment. 'The Cynic' does not believe that that everyone who is homeless suffers from an addiction, or could be cured of it, just that the vast majority are and could be. Whether addiction results from the difficulties of living on the street or the original cause, is not important. What is important is that when these addictions do occur, they are what keeps people in the vicious cycle of homelessness. If the government really wants to tackle this problem, it should help defeat mental illness, not waste money on coming up with new

cynicThe cynic agrees that the government has the wrong approach to tackling homelessness, the problem is that no one else in the country seems to know what to do either. Worse than having the wrong approach, the Labour government is actually helping to increase the problem by treating it's symptoms rather than it's causes. Labour crows about the money it has ploughed into programs to combat homelessness. It points to decreases in levels of people living on the street as proof that it is solving the problem. What rubbish! These argumetns are mere casuistry backed up by dodgy statistics. (A 2005 study showed that 63% of council staff felt pressured to bend the rules to reduce the number they accepted as homeless for the sake of statistics). Somehow the government imagines that if they’re-housing all homeless people in the UK, those people will overnight, miracoulsy transform into functioning members of society again.

'When you see 50 to 80 people waiting for a soup run, they are generally not homeless people, they are people are drawn back from hostels by these free sources of food.. Westminster councillor Angela Harvey

This all started forty years ago with the outpouring of sympathy that began after several exposes into the extent of homelessness People opened up their Churches, their basements or whatever, and offered up a place to people for a night to keep them off the streets. These well meaning citizens never asked themselves, ‘what happens when it is time to move the people on, out of the Church.?’ Charities also opened up soup kitchens so that the homeless could get hot meals every day to to keep them from starving. All of these are, admirable efforts, but they only serve to make it possible and acceptable for people to go on living on the streets.

' ‘Alcoholism and addictions to drugs are forms of mental illness and should be treated as such'Just as bad as treating the symptom is refusing to see the problem. Despite the apparently praiseworthy policy of training the homeless for jobs or moving them out of overnight shelters into the 'hallowed ground' of government-provided unsupported housing, the result is actually a case of money down the drain - to the tune of £60,000

Remain a Target for Oxfam

18

Summit: What would Oxfam be concentrating on with the money from this fund?Ms Fooks: …we are interested in funding …charities that work in the areas of livelihoods (including benefits advice and workers’ rights), asylum, participation, gender equality, race equality or climate change issues.

Summit: Oxfam has been fighting poverty in the UK since 1996, What progress has it made in this time?Ms Fooks: …Individual lives … have been transformed through our work, …communities … have really got to grips with their own problems with the help of Oxfam and at a policy level … positive policy changes have been passed and negative policy changes have been stopped as a result of wider campaigns which Oxfam has contributed to. As a whole, under the Labour government, poverty in the UK has decreased. Sadly, for various reasons it is now increasing. The job is not done, which is why Oxfam continues to work in the UK.

Real change requires reforming poverty trap created by the Welfare State

Summit: Would there be anything specific that the Government could do to assist in the battle against poverty?Ms Fooks: Yes. One specific headline issue is

Oxfam announced last month that it was pledging £20,000 to its Corporate Social Responsibility Fund, established in 2008 to tackle poverty in Oxford. Whilst Oxford has an image of prosperity, 10 of the city’s 85 neighbourhoods are in the 20% most deprived areas in the United Kingdom. Louise Fooks, Communications Director for Oxfam’s UK Poverty campaign told us why it is time to see a different side of Oxzford and provided a far reaching goal for all of Britain.

Oxford’s poverty deserves a Corporate Social Responsibility Program

Summit: Does Oxford have an exceptionally severe problem with Poverty? To what would you attribute this? Ms Fooks: I would not choose to highlight any particular causes of poverty in Oxford, but rather I ….the fact that it should not be a surprise that poverty exists in Oxford. The UK is one of the richest countries in the world, and yet one in five people who live in the UK live in poverty. Oxford may be one of the most affluent areas in the country, but the level of poverty in the UK is so high that every area suffers in some degree.’

Summit: Why is Oxfam concentrating on Oxford?Ms Fooks: Oxfam is known for its work overseas, a lot of people know it for its humanitarian relief or its development work. Actually its UK Poverty campaign is a very significant part of its work and its mission of combating poverty wherever it occurs in the world. The program in Oxford is slightly different because it is a corporate social responsibility program, whereby Oxfam is saying ‘we are a city employer based here in Oxford, therefore we are going to give something back to the city in which we have our roots’. It is not signaling out Oxford as a city, which is the most needy, or most deserving, it is simply the place that Oxfam has a particular responsibility towards.

InterviewsOxford and Britain

Interview by: Gervase Poulden

>>continued on pg. 35

the level of poverty in the UK is so high that every

area suffers in some degree

Debate It

19

Summit: How did The Gatehouse start? Smith: At the end of the 1980’s, all of the projects working with homeless people closed from 4:00 pm to 7:00 pm in order for them to clean up. Some people at the church realized that people needed a place to get out of the rain, snow etc. and they wanted to help. They had no experience or qualifications except that they were hospitable people, and they learned from their mistakes. The project grew slowly into what The Gatehouse is today; I myself started work here in 2000. I am trained as an agricultural engineer, but felt like I was a people person and would like to work with people. I saw an ad for a position available here, decided to try it, and now here I am.

Summit: How many people work there? Do most of them come from a background in community work? Smith: Well, I’m actually the only full time employee here. We have a paid staff of six workers, with two people coming in each day. About 200 people volunteer here in all, on an average week about 60-70 different people come in. People come from every background imaginable: professionals who come straight from the office, teachers, retired people sometimes in their 80’s, people training in nursing or medicine. Some people come here to try it out looking for a possible change in career, to see if they have the gift of working well with people. Undergraduates from the university volunteer here too, coming in after classes and such. The Gatehouse was initially an endeavor taken on by the church, but now the people volunteering here are not exclusively from the church; people of all faiths are welcome here.

Summit: In your opinion, what are the greatest challenges and rewards of working at The Gate house?

Smith: One of the biggest challenges working here is to try and plan a long-term future. Though financially we are well supported within the community, the building we are currently housed in belongs to the city council. They need the building back for their own use in the near future, and we will need to find something else. People here live such drastic lives- that’s the most difficult thing to live with. Just recently- Rick used to come in here regularly, and he had managed to buy himself a nice flat and everything, he hadn’t been keeping very well, and recently he had a heart attack and died. The life expectancy of

people living on the streets is forty-two. On the other hand there are always things to celebrate, the people who volunteer here always say that the most rewarding thing is to become a part of such an interesting community. When you walk through central Oxford, its amazing how many of the people you will know. One of the

students who work here told me that initially he was nervous about mixing with homeless people. Then one day, he was cycling down high street and someone called out his name- it was one of the people he worked with here. He said the incident made his day.

Summit: How effective are organizations like the Gatehouse in solving the long term problem of homelessness?Smith: It’s difficult to gauge really, these days the tendency is to look at measurable outcomes, look at tangible things like employment records and accommodation progress. People want to tick boxes and point to success. Life is actually much more messy than that. People here have problems like mental health issues, drug abuse, alcoholism, bad health, learning difficulties. People slip back into these patterns even after they have gotten on their feet. We are always around when people come crashing down, to pick up the pieces. So I’d

Project Director at the GatehouseInterview with Andrew W. Smith,

We are always around when people come crashing down, to pick up the pieces.

>>continued on pg. 35

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with thousands others to disappear into the murky depths of the Burmese state prisons, much criticised by the western world for their oubliette-like inhumanity. But the promise of a democratic government via the upcoming 1990 elections and pledges to overhaul the crumbling economic situation in the country, brought hope that belied the widespread fear in the face of the seething instability and poverty. In light of this, Suu Kyi and her associates quickly formed the National Legue for Democracy, of which she became general secretary. Impassioned by her cause, Suu Kyi spent many months touring the country, giving speeches in which she blamed incompetency of the Burmese leadership for the poverty and fragmentation of unity within Burma. This was enough to catapult her into state arrest, but the vote, even in her absence, reflected the people she had touched with her words. The NLD won by a huge majority. The military refused to recognise the result.

'It is not power that corrupts, but fear'

Opinion

When Aung San Suu Kyi started at St Hughs college, Oxford, in 1964, she couldn't have imagined the dramatically significance that her political studies would later take in her remarkable life. It was then seventeen years after the assignation of her figurehead father, General Aung San, who had become renowned throughout the world for his instrumental role in freeing Burma from British colonial rule and the Japanese occupation. Suu Kyi was two years old at the time. During her student years she became increasingly fascinated with his image - a fascination that, through accumulation of papers concerning him, would culminate in her completion of his biography, in which she refers to him as the guardian of the Burmese people's political conscience. The mantle Suu Kyi felt her father had left her to carry for her people was to form the foundation of her life; so when she fell in love with Michael Aris during her studies at St Hughs, their relationship and later marriage was tinged with the responsibility that tied Suu Kyi to Burma.

'The Coup that became notorious as the 8888 Popular uprising'

Yet it was to be her equally extraordinary mother, having been the instrument behind Suu's early introduction to politics as a former Burmese ambassador to India and Nepal, who reunited her with her homeland. Daw Khin Kyi's severe stroke brought Aung San Suu Kyi immediately to her side, in the midst of rising political unrest, following the resignation by popular demand of Burma's former leader, Ni Win, in 1988. The infamous military junta, under the banner of the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC – now the State Peace and Development Council, SPDC ) headed by the General Saw Maung, seized power in a military coup that was to explode into the violence that became notorious as the 8888 Popular Uprising, slaughtering uncounted thousands,

freedomBy: Anna Friedler fear

from

>>continued on pg. 34

photo courtesy of bbc.co.uk

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responsibility for causing climate change. In Copenhagen, Christian Aid supported partner organisations, like the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance and the Nigeria Climate Action Network, to make their voices heard amongst decision makers. Christian Aid has over 600 partner organizations across 50 countries. Many of these countries are already being affected by climate change. I was lucky enough to visit the Ukamba Christian Community Services (UCCS), a Christian Aid partner in Kenya’s eastern province, this October. The last five rainy seasons have failed

in this region – that’s insufficient rain for more than two years. People are suffering from poor diet because the staple crops of maize and beans are failing.

'What is new is the frequency and severity of the drought.'

Jones, a 71-year-old retired English teacher from Kitui, told me that this is the driest he has ever seen his village. The mango trees have dried up and cattle have died of dehydration, meaning people have to plough the fields by hand. Jones is the Secretary of a community-

based organisation in Nzauni, which Christian Aid supports through UCCS. His group has built a dam near their village, called the Mavulya dam: UCCS, with money from Christian Aid, gave the materials and the tools, and the community provided the labour. The dam is a simple barrier for water collection, built at the base of a natural hollow. It collects rainwater, stopping it from running away. When it does rain, this resource should last

the villagers many months, feeding both a tap and a cattle trough.

The failure of the Copenhagen Conference was a failure that what caused by dramatically differing expectations from the delegations present. Some, such as the USA and parts of Europe came with the hope that they would be able to force a deal that would mean not having to cut their emissions too much, because this requires money – investing in renewable energy sources, consumers getting higher electricity bills, paying for the expansion of public transport – and it’s money that most were not willing to pay. Other delegations, namely China and India, hoped that they would be forced into curbing their own rising emissions, because they don’t agree that they should have to make cuts, given that current global warming has been caused almost exclusively by the industrialized West. The most vulnerable nations, like Bangladesh and Tuvalu, which will be affected hugely by extreme weather conditions like floods and rising sea levels, were looking for generous contributions from richer nations to allow them to build flood defences and fund other adaptation measures. NGOs had come together to add their voices to the pleas of the majority world against the cautionary gestures of the West, because climate change is first and foremost an issue of justice. The poorest countries, who are suffering first and worst, need assistance from the rich North, who have by far the heaviest weight of historical

Climate Change:

Hannah Brock, of Christian Aid, fresh from a trip to the Copenhagen Conference, highlights how the failure to reach a meaningful deal to restrict carbon emissions will affect third world countries most of all.

An Issue of Justice

By: Hannah Brock

>>continued on pg. 35

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above the earth are displayed on large screens to US military and intelligence officers; and, should he want to see them, to President Obama himself. No longer is the enemy depicted in the War on Terror rhetoric a ghostly figure concealed in the mountains, now he can be seen - a small white speck on a screen - from the safe confines of the Pentagon or the White House Situation Room. Obama though, no longer does this personally, he long ago delegated responsibility for the selection and elimination of targets to the C.I.A - not the military- and so it is normally intelligence officers in Langley that are the protagonists in this video game war. The military has its own program

of Drone strikes, but these are limited to conventional military strikes within recognized war zones. C.I.A strikes often take place outside the parameters of the battlefield in places where America is not at war, such as Pakistan. Accordingly such strikes, including the ones that took place a few days after Obama's inauguration, are officially secret and as such not formally acknowledged by the administration. In some ways the unmanned drone is the perfect weapon for the first-world nation at war. By using drones Obama doesn't have to risk American lives on the ground. Furthermore, once inaccessible al-Qaeda operatives can now be targeted

anywhere in the world. In terms of winning hearts and minds at home, the drone program also has a lot to offer. On one level the use of drones looks like the apogee of intelligent, 'surgical', military tactics and doesn't produce American dead. This attitude is reinforced by a broader public ignorance about the drone program. Very little is known about it's specifics, and, unlike conventional

Since the dawn of the mechanisation of war, it has become normal for a nation's leader and their top military advisers to be cocooned from the realities of the wars they wage; seldom do they ever witness the consequences of the abstract strategies they concoct in war rooms thousands of miles from the battlefield. Recently however, very quietly, and unbeknown to the public at large, this situation has changed. Three days after Barack Obama's inauguration, Obama authorized two C.I.A. drone strikes over Pakistan, killing a total of 20 people. The first strike killed four al-Qaeda suspects, the second, presumably operating on faulty intelligence, hit the residence of a local pro-government leader killing his whole family, including three children. In his first nine and a half months in office Obama has authorized more drone strikes inside Pakistan than George Bush did in his last three years in office. Since 2006 between 750 and 1000 people have been killed by drone strikes. Seemingly out of nowhere, unmanned drones have gone from being the stuff of over-imaginative Tom Cruise films to being the weapon of choice in the murky war being waged in the 'AfPak' theatre of operations. Drones are now being flown out of bases inside Afghanistan and Pakistan, once they are above their target area control is ceded to operators in Nevada and Virginia, and from there the images the drones pick up thousands of feet

please,

STOPdroning on

(us)

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23

warfare, drone strikes from thousands of feet into isolated mountain regions are impossible for journalists to document. Paradoxically, the use of high-technology on the battlefield has only increased the demand within U.S military and intelligence circles for the most basic of commodities: reliable human intelligence on the ground. The use of drones has seemingly provided the Americans with complete control of the war; but behind the facade of omnipotence is a reliance on a complex network of local informants and information provided by other intelligence agencies. Supporters of the drone program have argued that this human element has been crucial in undermining the confidence of groups such as the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Reports suggest that the drone strikes created a climate of suspicion amongst militants; they have responded by torturing and publicly killing those suspected of providing the Americans with intelligence - further reducing their own popularity within the communities they rely upon for shelter and anonymity. However, this cuts both ways. It is almost impossible for Western intelligence agencies and their allies to discern who can be trusted in regions where individuals are bound by complex tribal, religious and historical allegiances. This was made apparent on December 30th when a double agent, who had been vouched for by Jordanian intelligence, detonated a bomb inside an American complex in Afghanistan killing seven C.I.A operatives. Whether or not drones can win the wars being waged in Afghanistan and Pakistan is a matter which will be heavily debated over the next few years. In the meantime, questions are being asked as to the legal and ethical parameters within which the drone program is operating.

The prospect of drone warfare is terrifying not because it is any more horrific than other weapons being used on the modern battlefield but because of the mentality it creates amongst those who oversee their use. A whole dimension of modern war has been reduced to an arcade game; unlike in conventional ground warfare where decisions are made on reflex in the heat of battle, strikes are now being made in cold blood from a control room thousands of miles away. This creates circumstances in which civilian deaths are not only sad side effects but inevitable and calculated. Such was the case with the strike on Baitullah Meshud in August 2009. Reports have stated that those

operating the drone in Langley, Virginia could clearly identify not only Meshud but his wife and uncle from the live feed provided by the drone. The strike on Meshud was made in the knowledge that there would be civilian casualties - in this case eleven others died apart from Meshud himself. This might have been acceptable to Obama who happily announced that "We took out Meshud" in a radio address on August 20th. However, others are less confident. Philip Alston, the UN special rapporteur on extra-judicial executions,

has accused the C.I.A of "killing significant numbers of people" whilst having "absolutely no accountability in terms of the relevant international laws". At root the lasting inheritance of the drone program will be that it has made the most powerful figures in the world actively complicit in the premeditated killings of known civilians. As machines begin to strip war of the uncertainties that once made civilian casualties excusable, the boundary between legitimate military actions and casual murder will become increasingly blurred.

The prospect of drone warfare is terrifying not because it is any more horrific than the use of other weapons...but because of the mentality it creates amongst those who oversee its use.

A whole dimension of modern war has been reduced to an arcade game.

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“The Values Question”David Brooks/NY TimesNovember 24, 2009

http://www.nytimes.com

The debate about health care reform in America cannot be solved by objective economics alone; it’s a question of choosing the values of the nation. As the nation becomes wealthier, the population wants an increase in safety and security in return for rapid economic growth. The nation is then faced with a trade-off between directing capital towards market efficient outcomes and the welfare policies that protect the nation’s aging and vulnerable. Initially it was thought that health care reform could both reduce its expenses and increase coverage to the uninsured, reducing their suffering without using money wastefully. That would have been ideal. Congress did indeed propose bills that would maintain the care the insured received, and offer respite to those not helped by the system currently. However, the inevitable trade off required that the nations wealth would be directed towards achieving those outcomes, shaving off the pie that is used for economically productive investments. Though incentive systems for hospitals and doctors tried to increase the efficiency of the system, the cost of the system as a whole would not be reduced by a significant amount. In the end, the nation faces a choice of moral decency versus economic growth, no matter what the bar graphs say.

Best ofarticles from

“In Class, Marines Learn Cultural Cost Of Conflict”Thomas Pierce/NPRJanuary 9, 2010

http://www.npr.org

Cultural anthropology is the new tactic on the battlefield, for American Marine officers who have returned to the classroom often after being at war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Anthropologist Paula Holmes-Eber preaches the importance of understanding the local culture when working in a foreign environment. While on ground in a war zone it is imperative for soldiers to know the full consequences of their actions. For Instance, destroying a single bridge, could cut off the route for farmers from a village to a market, effectively cutting off their lifelines and creating poverty for the entire village. However, to get through to her students and gain some credibility, Holmes-Eber first has to unravel the singular culture of the Marine Corps; the language, the rituals, the values. Straggling the two foreign cultures, Homes-Eber has come into conflict with the values of her own profession, who regard working with the military as a treacherous act. Whether the lessons taught here will actually inform decisions on the battlefield and help create collaborative relationships remains to be seen.

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Debate it

around the world“Some Frank Talk About Haiti” Nicholas D. Kristof/NY Times January 21, 2010

http://www.nytimes.com

As heart rendering images from Haiti of homes reduced to rubble, people carrying the bloodied bodies of those trapped under buildings and children suffering from malnutrition flood the media and people are urged to do their bit, the viability of third-world aid comes into question. Columnist Nicholas Kristof responds to comments on his blog by people unsure of the point of adding to American debt by donating to Haiti. Can the situation really be salvaged from the depths of despair? Where is all the money going? However, though currently being flooded by foreign aid, Haiti ranks forty-second in aid per person out of impoverished countries globally. Blaming everything from the low I.Q. of the Haitian population, the countries corruption and a pact with the devil seems easier than understanding the real issue. The real cause of Haiti’s problems are its debts. For example the huge debt that France has imposed on the country restrains it’s economy. Locals and foreigners have deforested the country to the degree that a measly 2% of the country is forested today, destroying agricultural prospects. Haitians themselves are hardworking and intelligent, succeeding when given the right opportunities in other countries. Outside of the moral incentive for aid, the political leadership of President René Préval is creating the conditions to make Haiti a good investment far ahead of many African countries. Its geographical location, internal political stability and capable population could help turn the country around; and the answer is business investment and exporting to the United States.

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and resources free of charge. One volunteer told me that the aim of the Gatehouse was to have as few rules as possible, and by so doing simply make those who visit feel warmly welcomed. The building itself is owned by the council; in the long-term the project will have to find new premises but for the time being the central position makes the basement on St Michael’s Street the ideal place from which to offer help. Judith Condor Vidal has been involved in organising the procurement of home-made soup for the Gatehouse for four years and works for half

an hour a week arranging the

soup menu – the greatest challenge, she told me, was finding imaginative and interesting names for several hundred variations of soup. The “soup link” network – which in a height of efficiency apparently only requires two meetings a year to maintain – provides home-made soup to the Gatehouse every day from November to March and , though the Gatehouse has primarily Christian origins, is assisted by members of religious associations of every conceivable denomination, from Buddhist to Russian Orthodox. Schools help out too – even, Judith said with a rueful smile and a set of quotation marks in the air in front of her, “teenagers”. The beauty of the network is in its size – there are so many people involved, perhaps 250, that each person need only make one batch of soup a year. The soup is stored, frozen, in large plastic cartons. Judith, who described herself as “a campaigner”, told me of the day she was invited to see the Queen and took with her a book of soup recipes written by members of the Soup Link network accompanied by each individual’s thoughts on being involved in helping the homeless. The book will hopefully one day see publication – though quite how she will find time amidst her other ventures, such as “Trading

Those among

you who frequent the Oxford

Union may have noticed the blue door opposite its gate on St Michael’s Street, but I certainly had not until I went to talk to Judith Condor Vidal about her work in arranging soup menus for “The Gatehouse”, a registered charity in the heart of Oxford which by its own description provides “safety, soup and sanctuary” to those in need in Oxford. My first impression

when entering the basement room one morning was that it was large and chilly, but the numerous overhead heaters declared the fact that it would provide a rare few hours of warmth when it was opened in the evening. I was struck also by the bright pieces of art on the walls, which upon speaking to one of the volunteers I learnt were the work of their guests from an art group run on Wednesdays, and which were auctioned off from time to time to raise money for the Gatehouse. From the corner where we sat I spied four or so shelves of books, which guests could borrow, with authors as wide-ranging as Danielle Steele, Margaret Atwood and Jasper Fforde. Against the wall further down the room were two computers which guests could also use. The Gatehouse was established in 1988 as a Christmas emergency shelter and has grown from there. It is open to anyone over twenty-five (other homeless shelters in Oxford such as “One Foot Forward” cater for those between sixteen and twenty-four) between five and seven in the evening from Monday to Saturday and from three till five on Sunday and receives a grant from the city council, but most of their activities are covered by people and organisations volunteering their time

The GatehouseBy: Dawn Hollis

photos courtesy of Dawn Hollis

Do it

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Do Itfor Development”, an organisation marketing Fair Trade products, remains to be seen. She also spoke of a friend, also involved in the Soup Link and also invited to a royal audience, who had broken every taboo in asking Her Majesty a direct question – that being what her favourite soup was. So now the Gatehouse can offer its guests “Queen’s Special” when they serve leek and potato soup! I returned in the evening at four forty-five to get a glimpse of the Gatehouse in action. I placed myself out of the way in a corner buttering what seemed like a mountain of hot cross buns whilst a buzz of activity swarmed around me. Just as with the soup network supporting it, the evening opening-time was an example of incredible organisation as sandwiches were made, soup prepared for serving and tables given a final wipe-down. Ten or so minutes before the doors were opened the young lady organising the evening called everyone to pause for a briefing. Those with any illnesses were asked to remain away from the kitchen, and different duties were allotted, from standing on the door to mingling with the guests and serving tea. Finally, she called for a moments’ silence, and for perhaps a minute the volunteers stopped and reflected in the calm before the storm.And what a storm – everyone worked calmly and well, not only providing for the guests’ physical needs of food and drink, but also sitting and talking with them, and there was a lovely sense of community as guests and volunteers alike bunched around tables. Half an hour in a dozen or so pizzas – left over from the lunchtime buffet at Pizza Hut – arrived and were handed round, vanishing quickly. During my time I spoke to a few of the volunteers about why they chose to work at the Gatehouse. One man, who worked as an engineer, told me that problems in his own past led him to want to give something back, and personally I can think of no better way to do so than in providing direct assistance and

welcome to those who a pamphlet produced by the Gatehouse described as “castaways in their own city”. Graduate students and those in full-time work alike spoke of how they discovered something “a bit different” in helping out, and another volunteer spoke of how he appreciated the fact that the wide number of volunteers and variety of skills brought by each meant that he never felt the need to go out of his comfort zone; many did strike up conversations with the guests but those perhaps less confident, he said, could still help out in other ways. All that I saw and heard that day has led me to think that the Gatehouse is a true success story of community endeavour in helping those less

fortunate. There is a massive homelessness problem in Oxford and it is sometimes difficult to understand how the council manages to so overlook them. A chart on one of the notice boards struck

me particularly; produced from the answers of guests, it displayed what proportion of them slept where on a given night; a shocking thirty percent slept rough. But it is a testament to the goodwill of the people of Oxford that establishments such as the Gatehouse exists to provide good food, warmth, shelter and, most

importantly of all, respect for those living on the streets. The Gatehouse itself is overwhelmed by volunteers, but I do hope that those reading this might be persuaded to do whatever they can to help out in a small way – perhaps in bringing a charities motion supporting the Gatehouse to their JCR – for as the “soup link” network and the way in which 250 people between them can provide soup to the homeless for six months of a year goes to show, the little things can accumulate to provide a very great help to those in need.

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about themselves. For instance, one pride is the video diary project for people with alcohol misuse issues: by talking about their drinking habits and their feelings to a camera, many of these people find it much easier to face their demons, and get the conviction to take up arms against them.

How is this all different from the “revolving door” system that OxHoP’s trying to avoid?

The difference is that the supported housing, and services that accompany it, doesn’t just tidy people off the streets. It gets them to address their problems and overcome the oppression of addictions or illnesses that are keeping them down. Once these are under control, so much follows so easily: the desperation that leads to law-breaking falls away, and better, healthier attitudes grow in their place. This gives people the chance to break free completely from the chains of street life and dependence on charity, so that they can eventually move on to build up lives of their own.

What can we do to support OxHoP?

One easy way to help out is to organise donations – setting up a Collection Point for unwanted clothes and bedding in your College would make you very popular with OxHoP, for instance. But because OxHoP supports homeless people, the best way of helping OxHoP is to support homeless people too – and the charity itself offers us a very innovative way of doing this. It comes in the form of a small booklet of vouchers, each of which entitles the bearer to a free night’s stay at O’Hanlon House. And these vouchers are so much more valuable than the £3.50 that you pay for them; not only are they free from the doubt that can be scribbled all over cash handouts, but also, in opening someone’s eyes to the aid that they have the right to, you might be making the first step to change their life.

Profiled

Oxford Homeless Pathways – what does it do?

Too many homeless people get sucked onto a certain luckless “revolving door” life trajectory, which takes them off the streets into care, court, prison and back to the streets again. It is this vicious cycle and its superficial solution to homelessness that the local charity, Oxford Homeless Pathways, or OxHoP, seeks to break. How is the charity structured?Within OxHoP there are two main tiers of care: first is the more intensely supportive environment of O’Hanlon House, where people can either pay £3.50 a night for a bedroom plus two hot meals, or by self-referral move up to the more serious resettlement floor. This is where they start to talk over their problems with professionals, aiming to work out and tackle whatever problems led to their destitution. The next stage of care is Julian Housing, a nest of halfway houses where residents still receive support, but learn to live with increasing independence and to look after themselves, picking up the life skills that will be essential when they eventually “move on”, as they call it, to homes of their own.

How does OxHoP help its residents?

Aside from the obvious benefits of comfortable beds and warm food, whoever sleeps at O’Hanlon House is entitled to take part in its more constructive Day Services. Here, help is on offer for residents to think about the future and make plans for change, but they can also take their pick from a wide range of training and education activities. From music and art groups to first aid and cookery, these serve the dual purpose of improving the participants’ self-confidence and well-being, and putting them on the road to qualifications or employment. There are other things going on too, which aren’t so much about gaining a skill as getting residents to learn more

OxfordHomeless

PathwaysBy: Lindsay Oldham

Interview

Do It

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requires preparation and cannot be done without knowledge and experience. We focus on building vocational skills through activity programs and training, and activities that support the work of centres like the Gap. Provision and training of sorts should go hand in hand; that homeless charities simply provide food is a misconception.

HAG trains its volunteers

Summit: Are students at an undergraduate/ graduate level qualified to train the homelessKusicka: We’re usually happy to provide training and support for all those who’re interested in working with us, in partnership with our centres. We provide training for running small group activities, but do not do any formal teaching. We have a representative on the Oxford Poverty Action Trust (OxPAT) commitee to let them know of student activities, coordinate fundraising in colleges through OxPAT collection boxes and help organise fundraisers. Student volunteers can also work at the day centres for a few hours every week.

Helping HAG develops skills for jobs you might have

Summit: Is working with a group like yours a good career prospect? Kusicka: We are not a charity, just a student group, but volunteering for us or coordinating an aspect of the group does broaden the university experience beyond collegiate life. Coordinator roles do develop organisational and leadership skills as they are involved in organising and monitoring the various aspects of the group. It is an extremely fulfilling experience. The more people work with us, the more successful the project becomes, so it is self fulfilling to participate.

To learn more about HAG, go to http://oxfordhub.org

Marc Kusicka, head coordinator of the Homeless Action Group (HAG), member group of Oxford Hub Community Volunteers (OHCV), speaks to Aditi Subramaniam about volunteer action, homelessness and the work done by the HAG.

Summit: What does the HAG do?Kusicka: We’re the Homeless Action Group, a student group and a part of 'studenthubs' which is the overall organisation with charity status. … and which started a year and a half ago, in Trinity term 2008. We hope to encourage students to volunteer to work with us, particularly in areas like fundraising for the homeless and at the Oxford Shower Project, soup kitchen which is our partner organisation. 'HAG helps the homeless escape the poverty trap' Kusicka: Our student volunteers also hold classes and activities daily at the Gap, another of our partner organisations, which is a vulnerable persons’ day centre. We believe this helps to build confidence. We run classes at the homeless centre, for example cookery classes, music classes, art classes, and anything else students wish to start up. Volunteers work on the annual “Shower Project”, or participate in one-off events, such as the annual sleep-out in November. Summit: Quite a few people believe helping the homeless encourages dependence on charity and provides no opportunity for the homeless to remove themselves from the vicious circle of unemployment and poverty.Kusika: Before they can do that, they need a certain amount of grounding in basic survival skills and some amount of vocational training. We hope to be able to train those who need our help to be able to stand on their own feet, but this

volunteers and Interview

HAGhomeless receive job

training from

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programme, say in the health care sector, trying to maximise the impact of the investment.Working to Tackle Homelessness

Summit: Matt, in 2008 you first helped set up and run Spark. Can you tell us about what Spark does?

Knopp: We got some funding from a government department, Price waterhouseCoopers, BT and Places for People. The purpose of Spark was and is to create SEs that will help to combat the problems of homelessness. In 2008 (and 2009) we had about 150 applications for either business start-ups or current businesses that had an idea of how to develop growth. We reviewed these applications and took 15 organisations in both years onto a investment readiness and development programme that ran for 9 months. The first stage was developing the business ideas, writing business plans and helping them understand how to actually pitch for investment. There was then an exciting 2 days when we did the pitching

Summit: Matt, for the last three years you have worked as a senior consultant at EastSide consulting. How does EastSide consulting differ from a typical management consulting firm?

Knopp: Well, for a start, we are a social enterprise (SE) ourselves. We work exclusively with other SEs and other companies in the 3rd sector. The people that work for us tend to range in backgrounds, they don’t tend to be your typical management consultant with a top management consultancy background necessarily. The founders come from Investment-Banking, I myself come from very much an entrepreneurial background... We tend to approach projects in a very practical hands-on way. What I mean by that is, all too often management consultants tend to just tell people how to measure problems, rather than finding practical solutions which a management team in a SE or charity will actually be able to

For the first two sections of our ‘’Careers Section’ , we will be talking to Matt Knopp, of EastSide Consultancy. For the last three years Matt has worked as a senior consultant at EastSide consulting,, a consultancy firm which deals exclusively with social enterprises (SEs). This issue, Matt highlights how EastSide Consultancy differs from typical management consultancy firms, and talks about this specifically with reference to the issue of homelessness.

implement. Summit: As a third sector consultant, what does your job involve?

Knopp: At the heart of what we do is a real passion for a belief that the social sector will only flourish through professional capacity building. Let me give you an example: A homeless charity might want to start a business that only employs homeless people and gives them the opportunity to train certain skills. The sorts of ways that we get involved would be to evaluate the feasibility of their business idea, and make recommendations about what they need to do to make sure that that business is sustainable. We then write a business plan and put investment model together. which their board of trustees could potentially sign off. We also get involved with running government programmes. A government department might want to find a good way to spend a million pounds on social businesses. We might design and manage an investment readiness

Careers

social enterprises

consultingfor

By: Jan MaternSocial Enterprise Coordinator, OxfordHub

Do it

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event. The panel was made up of senior executives from PWC and BT and from our other partners such as the Big Issue Investment and the Trees group and then we decided how to distribute a million pounds we had in investment.

Summit: When you were making that decision what was the single most important quality you were looking for in entrepreneurs?

Knopp: I think that every panel member probably had a slightly different view on this. However, I think, overall the main thing we’re looking for in any kind of pitch is the person. Anyone can write a business plan but what you’re doing, especially with an early-stage business, is investing in the individuals. Do you believe that this person can execute what they say they’re going to execute? And if there’s going to be a problem, how are they going to handle it? I’m sure that any investor would agree they’d rather give money to a talented and committed person with no idea than to an excellent idea with someone mediocre at the helm. So it really is down to the people. That’s why it’s so important in the social sector to develop young people and students to make sure that good talent is coming into the sector.

Summit: SE works extremely well in addressing certain social needs, but there might be problems that it is less fit to address than government or charities. Why do you think SEs are the right tool to combat homelessness?

Knopp: Business has the ability to do things that governments can’t do, and to do them in a

more financially sustainable way than the public sector. SEs that are set up to generate work and training opportunities usually engage people that are very low on confidence. Maybe they have had drug or alcohol problems, maybe they have been abused. They are not people that exactly have a lot of encouragement in their lives or felt particularly safe. While SEs are run along robust business lines, they also provide a caring and supportive atmosphere for people who have been away from the job market for a long time; SEs can provide a safe place for people to transition from long term unemployment into jobs. Having a job helps you live independently and without support networks. But if you try

and put these people straight into jobs in normal companies, they’re going to come across all sorts of problems: lack of support, fairly unsympathetic colleagues, etc. SE has a massive role to play there, in getting people who are long term unemployed back into the job market.Next week Matt will be talking more in depth about working with Social Enterprises and the best ways for University Graduates to proceed if they want to get involved in a company like Eastside Consultancy.

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Events and Opportunities

KEEN is a charity of Oxford and Oxford Brookes university students which provides activities for children and young people with special needs. Four sessions every week! GrEAT: a social club for over 18’s every Monday night. Zig-Zag: a drama workshop for under 18’s every Friday afternoon. KEEN Teens: a social club for 11 to 17 year olds every Friday evening. AllSorts: our Saturday sports session and biggest session of the week. Volunteering is on a non commitment basis - come as often as you like! No experience necessary. Email: keen@keenoxford.org

WHEN: Monday of 7th Week. WHERE: St. Annes College.WHAT: Second hand dress sale, accompanied by wine!Contact: louise.knight@st-annes.ox.ac.uk OR daisy.hooper@lmh.ox.ac.uk

Green cycle is a new social enterprise set up by Oxford students.We want to encourage the recycling of cycles in Oxford, and make it easier for Oxford students to buy and sell bikes. We're creating an online network to facilitate the trading of bikes, as well as sell repaired abandoned cycles.Check out our website at www.oxfordgreencycle.org.uk if you're looking to sell your cycle, or buy a second-hand one.We're currently looking for volunteers, as well as web designers and bike mechanics.Drop us as an e- mail at greencycle@oxfordhub.org if you have any comments, ideas or suggestions!

KEEN to volunteer?

Dress Sale to aid Hands up for Darfur!

Buy or sell Bikes

Reality of homelessness in the UK and Oxford”On Wednesday of 7th week the Oxford Hub is holding a Series speaker event aiming to break through the myths and misconceptions around homelessness.Why are there so many homeless in Oxford? How do communities and councils address this issue?These questions and many more will be discussed by the following speakers:Peta Cubberly, Regional Children's Coordinator of SHELTER (South East)Nerys Parry, Homelessness Manager for Oxford Council

Not In My Back Yard?

Events and Opportunities

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Be part of Christian Aid’s gap year scheme and inspire and educate young people about development issues. This 10-month programme begins September 2010 and places participants in one of our local UK offices where they work to publicise Christian Aid’s approach in particular and international development issues in general.Christian Aid will cover your expenses and living costs, and you don’t have to be a Christian - Christian Aid employs people of all faiths and none.Know more at: http://www.christianaid.org.ukQuestions? Email us: HBrock@christian-aid.org

Join other volunteers at Oxford Hub Community Volunteers. Work at:The Oxford Shower Project: On Saturday mornings in St. Giles church hall, help to prepare food and drink in the kitchen before handing it out to clients there. More volunteers always welcome on a rota basis.Oxford Homeless Pathways: New Project! Volunteers will run small group sessions, and there will be future opportunities for more volunteers.For one off volunteering opportunities look out for the

OxPAT collection in May that the OH: CV Homeless Action Group will be helping to organise.There is also a homelessness speaker event at the Oxford Union on Wednesday of 7th week, (3rd March) that we have been helping to organise. find out more at www.oxfordhub.org

Join Christian Aid!Do It

Many of us have become separated from reality of growing food waste in our economy and food poverty in our communities. This talk will have the speakers offering their expert insight into the

outlook for the future and possible solutions, followed by a perspective on the situation in Oxford and the exciting new Oxford student project Food Justice.

Tony Lowe, CEO of FareShare, nationwide charity addressing food povertyTristram Stuart, Author of 'WASTE', and organiser of Feeding the 5000 even

Waste not want not? Food waste and food poverty in the UK

Oxford Hub

Continuations

in major cities homelessness is common, accommodation is in high demand and consequently strict rationing systems mean that they are much less likely to receive assistance. Similarly, though policy maintains that local authorities should provide individuals with advice and information on homelessness, in practice this too often just isn’t the case.Denied access to both stable accommodation and vital information, provision for those which legislation does not consider a ‘priority’ is abysmal. Many end up staying in temporary hostels; the services offered by which vary from good to very poor. Though the government’s Hostels Capital Improvement Programme (HCIP), saw some progress in terms of the physical conditions of hostels, problems relating to residents, such as violence and theft are still rife. Moreover they continue to be under-resourced and poorly staffed, ill-equipped to offer vulnerable people the support needed to make the transition to settled housing. If the government’s aim is to actually keep people off the streets in the long term, and not to merely slimline rough sleeping counts, stable accommodation must be accessible to all individuals. Significant and sustained investment in social housing is thus essential. Currently shelters are clogged up with people waiting for suitable accommodation: in over 10% of hostels this wait is more than two years. Such long periods not only reduce the number of beds available to those still out on the streets, but they also intensify the difficulties vulnerable individuals face when they eventually have to adapt to independent living. Authorities should be assisting, not compounding such problems. The Finnish government is currently attempting to ease this transition by converting temporary shelters into housing units that facilitate independent as well as supervised living. The units thus prevent the type of subculture that can develop in hostels and inhibit the institutionalisation of individuals forced to spend years in temporary shelter.At present, government policy is interested in getting people off the streets (preferably in time for government counts); but this is as far as it goes, especially in its treatment of non-prioritised individuals. Beyond this, government strategy is clumsy and inconsistent; the benefits system demonstrates a complete lack of evaluative thinking: The 16 hour rule, for example, dictates that those studying for more than 16 hours a week are full-time students (and therefore are not entitled to housing benefit) making it impossible for homeless people to gain qualifications. Such a rule not only flies in the face of the Labour ethos that work pays, but it is nonsensical. Policy makers seem oblivious to the fact that if such people were able to improve their skills, they would be diverted from long-term benefit dependency and would therefore prove less expensive to the Exchequer in the long term. Similarly, the Single Room Rent restriction states that those under 25 are only entitled to enough housing benefit to cover the average cost of a single room in a shared house in the area; it therefore does little to help young people remain in housing.If the government is serious about tackling homelessness it must establish a strategy which stimulates collaborative thinking between the many agencies involved in the issue. Starting with legislation that introduces and protects the rights of non-prioritised people, politicians must ensure local authorities have the will and funding to address the problems faced by such individuals. The government must support all people making the transition from homelessness to independent living by providing resources, and, more importantly opportunities for training and the gaining of accreditation. Only then will the government be able to boast of statistics that ring true.

>>the debate continuesfrom pg. 16

She spent the next nineteen years of her life in and out of detention, over eleven of which she has been under house arrest. Neither this, nor the harsh treatment she has received at the hands of the military, has curbed her principles or desire for freedom on behalf of the Burmese people; since her initial incarceration, her tireless humanitarian campaigning has found a new form in her writings. In the most famous of these, 'Freedom from Fear' , she observes: "It is not power that corrupts but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it." The indomitable strength with which she pursues such assertions have lead her to be hailed as the modern Mahatma Gandhi and earned her numerous honours, including the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991, "for her non-violent struggle for democracy and human rights". True to the words they had exchanged many years before, Michael supported her throughout her many trials and hardships, never questioning Suu's determination. He died of cancer in 1999. Su Kyi had not seen him for four years, and was forced to watch powerless from the sidelines, knowing that were she to visit him, she could never return to the country she had dedicated herself to. In a recent meeting with the ten Asean nations, another Noble Peace Laureate, Barack Obama, urged the current Burmese leader General Thein Sein to release Aung San Suu Kyi. Suu kyi and her supporters can only hope that this unprecedented move may encourage the rest of the world to “use your freedom to promote ours” and to question their own political morality towards this end.

>>Aung San Suu Kyifrom pg. 20

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reforming the Welfare State. At the moment there is a bit of a benefits trap, so for people who are on benefits, it is very difficult for them to move off them and into paid work. The kind of work that they are being offered is part-time and short term, because the job market is very different to what it was fifty years ago, when you hoped to get a job for life. Nowadays the focus is on short-term, flexible work. What we are calling for is a sensible benefit system which is more flexible and makes it possible to move from a position of benefit to a position of being in work.

Summit: So the majority of people who are on benefits are stuck in that position?Ms Fooks: Exactly. The amount you are allowed to earn before losing out on benefits is very, very little. Once you have taken a job it can be very difficult to return to a position of receiving benefits and allowances and so the transition is always fraught with danger. So for example, a person on incapacity benefit might decide they are healthy enough to perhaps work part-time but might also be unsure whether they can continue to work for the next twenty years. At the moment is too risky and difficult to take that leap, because if they are unable to handle a job, they will find that they cannot return to benefits either.

That begins at the grassroots

Summit: What advice would you give people who wanting to help tackle poverty in the UK or OxfordMs Fooks: My advice would be to get out there and discover one of the many community groups working on poverty in the UK or just in Oxford. Students who want to see another side of Oxford other than just the university should make contact with grassroots groups and get involved and see if they can spare some of their time to help in someway.

>>Oxfam interview from pg. 18

No one is suggesting that water scarcity is anything new in sub-Saharan Africa. What is new is the frequency and severity of the drought. With a changing climate, extreme weather conditions like droughts and floods will become more frequent. But it’s not a done deal. The level of climate chaos that communities like Nzauni will experience is unknown. If we manage to limit global warming to 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels, the effects will be more manageable than a rise of 3 or 4 degrees. It is a cumulative problem, which is why it is absolutely imperative that carbon greedy economies like the USA act fast and effectively to slash their own contributions to green house gas emissions.

'We can forget about making poverty history [because] climate change will make poverty permanent'

Becuase no deal was reached in Copenhagen, there is all the more reason to keep on fighting. Climate change doesn’t respect national boundaries - time used on unilateral action is ill-spent. Nations at all levels of development must be persuaded of the urgent need to act, both for ourselves and for our neighbours. Having caught a glimpse of the impact of drought in Kenya, I’ve seen the way that climate change will affect the developing world. People who are already in vicious states of insecurity and want will be further pushed into deprivation. The physical and psychological effects of this are vast and climate change can only add to the levels of impoverishment. As Nazmul Chodhury from Practical Action in Bangladesh warns: “We can forget about making poverty history [because] climate change will make poverty permanent.”

>>Failure at Copenhagen from pg. 21

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be wary about promising results, but we are always there when people have nowhere to go. Summit: What would your response be to people who say that primary care is damaging to homeless people in that it doesn’t help keep people off the streets. Smith: I wouldn’t claim that the work we do here is actually damaging. I do agree that we do not provide all the services required to effectively keep people off the streets, and that is why we work in partnership with other institutions. If people need more specialized help we point them in the right direction, rather than try to solve everything ourselves. Our job here is to get people started, making the first steps towards making recovery possible. Summit: What policy changes would you like to see with regards to this issue? Smith: When people come in from the other European Union countries, and are caught without employment or British citizenship, nobody really accepts responsibility for these people. Local charities have limited resources; they say that these people are not their issue. But you are trying to run a city, and having people on the streets is not a healthy environment for the entire community. It would be useful to have some clarification on whose responsibility these people are, and have some resources allocated to be made available to them. They do become a part of our cities, so they are our responsibility.

>>Gatehouse interviewfrom pg. 19

HILARY2O1O

Oxford Hub is the focal point for charitable activity at Oxford University,

connecting students with causes, whether local, national, or international. It’s

the place to go to get involved in charitable, volunteer and socially

entrepreneurial activities, and for training and information on a range of

social and environmental issues, events and careers.

www.oxfordhub.org/seriesseries@oxfordhub.org

The Series

The Oxford Hub Series provides a platform for weekly debate and discussion of the key social, environmental and development issues that challenge us today. The Series brings Oxford's student charities together to run bigger and better speaker events, panels and debates. Each week, a different charity hosts the event.

Wednesdays, 8pm

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Is business the way forward for

charities?

Hosted by Oxford Hub

Speaker Simon Berry is the founder of

innovative organisation Cola Life and

Harriet Peel, representing Blue Skies, is an

Ethical Trading Manager for Tesco.

Post Copenhagen: What should

we be doing?

OUSU Ethics and Environment &

Oxford People and Planet

Speakers include slam-poet Danny

Chivers, Heike Schröder of the

Environmental Change Institute and

People & Planet’s Alys Mumford.

Forgotten Genocides

AEGIS, Oxford University Amnesty

International & Hands Up For

Darfur

Speakers from Aegis Trust, LSE, the

Holocaust Educational Trust and

London’s Central Synagogue

The Ethics of Meat Eating

Oxford Vegetarian Society

Speaker Toby Ord is Research Associate

at the Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics,

and founder of Giving What We Can.

***VEGAN ICECREAM GIVEAWAY***

Waste not, want not? Food waste

and food poverty in the UK

Oxford Hub:Community

Volunteers, Food Justice

Speakers include Tristram Stuart, author

of ‘WASTE’, and Tony Lowe, CEO of

FareShare

Should companies put ethics

before profit?

Oxford People and Planet, Oxford

University Amnesty International

Are companies only responsible to their

shareholders? Is business all about

money, not morals? Speakers TBC.

Not in my backyard? Looking at

homelessness in the UK and Oxford

Oxford Hub: Community

Volunteers

Speakers include Peta Cubberly from

Shelter, Nerys Parry, Homelessness

Manager for Oxford Council, and Lesley

Dewhurst of Oxford Homeless Pathways.

HIV/AIDs: What can youth

education do?

Oxford Development Abroad

(ODA) and Oaktree

What role does education play in

dealing with HIV/AIDs in developing

countries. Speakers TBC.

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