June 2013 Charity – Girlguiding Kidlington

As regular readers and students will know, each month Oxford College features a charity as part of our on-going effort to help raise the profile and support the amazing work that they do. For every like that we get on our facebook page, we donate 50p to our featured charity. So, if you would like to help – just like our page.

This month, our featured charity is Girlguiding Kidlington. Open to all girls aged between 5-25, over 250 members of the Brownies, Rainbows and Guides meet at the Green Road GuideCentre to have fun, learn and develop in a safe and fun environment.

Unfortunately, the Green Road Guide Centre that houses all of the activities was built in the 1970s and is in desperate need of repair. Well past its use by date, the building is now expensive to run and maintain, the prefabricated structure is degrading and needs extensive work to extend its life and improve accessibility to less able bodied members of the community. It has no disabled access, is not environmentally friendly and expensive to run and repair.

Vandalism has been a major problem in the past leading to the boarding up of all the windows on the wall adjacent to the alley. Then in 2004 squirrels got into the roof damaging the building even further.

Currently, fundraising is taking place to replace this building with a two storey building. A complete rebuild will provide modern facilities for a wider range of people in the community and provide an improved layout and greater levels of comfort, accessibility and acoustic deadening as well as being more energy efficient.

If funding cannot be found all the units would have to find separate accommodation for their weekly meetings. This would destroy the local guiding community. It would limit the girls contact with other units; it would especially affect them moving up in guiding to the next stage. This may cause fewer members to progress onto the next level in guiding, which would reduce the number of girls in guiding and the girls would miss out on opportunities they would not otherwise have.

A are currently a thriving guiding district, it is paramount to continue keep Girlguiding Kidlington thriving and support the local community that we rebuild.

If you would like to help Girguiding Kidlington, all you have to do is like our facebook page during the month of June and Oxford College will donate 50p!

For more information about Girlguiding Kidlington and how you can help directly, please click the link.