SVP 1833 News & Events
SVP 1833 represented at the House of Commons reception
Siobhan Burke, secretary of the Oxford Universities SVP 1833, spoke at the recent SVP reception at the House of Commons about her SVP activities and what it means to her to be a member.
“I'm a member of an SVP 1833 group based at Oxford University. We have about 30 members and I would like to tell you about some of our SVP work. Our longest running project is our visitation programme, where students visit an elderly or housebound parishioner for a couple of hours each week. I visit a lady called Christina, who is 94 and wonderful. Every Saturday afternoon I go round for a cup of tea, a piece of cake and a nice chat. It's nice because I can help her with little things like bringing the newspaper, fetching library books, and last year she decided that she'd like one of these CD player things she'd heard so much about. So we went out and got her one. If it wasn't for SVP I wouldn't have met her and she really has become an important part of my life.
Oxford has quite a big problem with homelessness for a city its size. A couple of years ago we set up a soup run on weekday mornings. So, students go out at 7am in the morning armed with hot drinks, soup, biscuits, even bacon sandwiches and we just offer them to people who have slept rough. What we've found is it isn't just the food that's important, but a lot of people just want someone to have a conversation with.
Many of our members volunteer at the Gatehouse. This is like a cafe for people who are homeless or vulnerably housed. It's open for a couple of hours each day and offers people food, clothing and again companionship and a sense of community. I've been volunteering there for a couple of years now and I love going down there. The people you meet are really amazing. I think often society doesn't recognize this and they themselves don't recognize it, but they really are amazing.
For me that's what the SVP is all about, showing people that they are amazing and they are worthwhile, especially when they can't see it for themselves. To say to them, yes, you're worth getting up for at 6am on a cold morning to take food to, you're worth dedicating 2 hours each week to visit. I think most of us aren't able to do big things that help large numbers of people, but we can do little things and those little things can make a huge difference to individuals.”