WEMPOWERED CIC

Hello WEmpowered friends and happy Summer Days!

The Wednesday Mommy Fitness sessions have been continuing with energy and enthusiasm – thank you to our fitness instructor Marta for facilitating this voluntarily for us, even persevering through the heat! – and welcome if you have joined the class recently!

We all enjoyed the crafts, friendship and food at the recent Mommy Cafe and Chat at BLAP, see photos below!

• Thank you to Urshla for offering face painting for the children – again, despite the heat – and to the Bakers who supplied us with delicious foods from Romanian crepes to pink trifle and cardamom biscuits.

• Our very own digital skills and computer programming instructor Saba brought along laptops – the children enjoyed having a go at coding/computer programming using Scratch.

And great progress in the Wild Flowers allotment!

• Marta shares “Children painted the bug hotel and populated it with slugs and lady bugs…we had such a wonderful day! I love our community of mommas!”

• Louise has been continuing to share gardening knowledge with a group of moms/mums/mummas. We were delighted that Louise could visit the Wild Flowers allotment and give us bespoke insights into the plants we have there. And thank you CAG for funding these sessions! We’re looking forward to harvesting and tasting the beetroots and other delicious vegetables later on this year…

• We were very grateful to be given a play house! The children have already been making themselves a cosy home in it.

The other Big News is that Marta, Saba and Hannah were honoured to participate in the OCVA Awards ceremony at Headington Hall, on behalf of all of the WEmpowered community!

• WEmpowered CIC is the Highly Commended Volunteer Organisation 2025, which is a brilliant and well-deserved achievement for the whole of the WEmpowered community in Blackbird Leys and the surrounding areas.

• Thank you to all for your support in friendship and volunteering whether face painting, baking or lending a hand and a kind word when it’s needed, and overall for creating this community together of neighbourhood families, representing a wonderful diversity of cultures and backgrounds!

• CONGRATULATIONS to Footprints Baby Loss Twin and Triplet Support which was the overall Winner in the Volunteer Organisation category, and CONGRATULATIONS to all of the volunteers who were nominated and awarded this year!

• In terms of numbers, we can see that there are many thousands of volunteers who continuously dedicate time and energy to the wellbeing of Oxfordshire as a whole, and WEmpowered CIC wishes to acknowledge all of those volunteers who are doing vital work for the community. The Local Health and Social Wellbeing report (on behalf of BOB VCSE Alliance, 2023) showed Oxfordshire to have over 4,000 registered charities and over 80,000 volunteers. However, this doesn’t include smaller constituted groups, so we know the number is higher.

Summery photos below!