Ahh…happy beginnings to the Oxjam project this year. We finally met the first of our super duper uber Oxjam Regional Managers last weekend. We invited them to Manchester for a two day training session at the YHA.
They all managed to suprise us with:
1) Their amazing enthusiasm and excitement for Oxjam
2) Their great ideas and the level of skills and experience within the group
3) Their dance moves….like duracell bunnies they just kept on going! Definately the best bunch of dancers we’ve had involved in Oxjam to date!
Everyone arrived on Friday betweeen 4 and 8pm. We then went of to eat at tepenyaki – a Japanese restraunt where our food was cooked up and flambe’d on our table! We learnt during dinner that David was actually a Kung fu master (as pictured below)
<a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/27485296@N08/2781009608/” title=”Davey San! by m_ed_ic, on Flickr”><img src=”http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3044/2781009608_a77a933465_b.jpg” width=”683″ height=”1024″ alt=”Davey San!” /></a>
The team were craving some real ale (I love this group!), so we went to a pub for a few quiet ones.
Saturday - To kick the day off we had an Oxjam pub quiz to share some basic facts about what Oxfam does. After that Benny (oxjam project manager) talked to us about the history of Oxjam and the plans for this year.
We were really lucky to have Chris (a campaigner from the Manchester office) come in and talk to us about his experience with Oxfam in Yemen – where gender inequality is a massive issue that Oxfam is combatting.
After that Claire from our team ran a workshop on how to recruit Oxjam volunteers.
<a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/27485296@N08/2781010368/” title=”group brainstorming by m_ed_ic, on Flickr”><img src=”http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3033/2781010368_c531163e13_b.jpg” width=”1024″ height=”683″ alt=”group brainstorming” /></a>
In the evening we went to an amazing Indian restaraunt, followed by a couple of bars and then clubbing. (Someone please upload some of the photos from this!)
Most of us got to bed at a reasonable hour (no names named ; ) and then got up for an early start on Sunday. We covered how to plan a launch event and then had some time for Q and A and reflection on what we’d learnt over the weekend.
<a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/27485296@N08/2780153349/” title=”talking by m_ed_ic, on Flickr”><img src=”http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3242/2780153349_66761cfeee_b.jpg” width=”1024″ height=”683″ alt=”talking” /></a>
We left at 1.30 with a tear in our eyes as we waved goodbye to our lovely Oxjammers.It’s certainly been worth all the hard work recruiting them and we can’t wait to see them again
