Octavia launches a new Communities Strategy

Thursday 14 October 2021
Communities Strategy 2021 2024 image

Octavia colleagues and supporters have celebrated the launch of a new Communities Strategy, ‘Building on our Legacy 2021-2024’.

The ambitious strategy has been devised involving in all aspects of our community work, from front-line to the Board and Octavia Foundation Trustees, and is a vital part of the jigsaw in helping Octavia to deliver the ambitions set out in our Corporate Strategy and to grow our support to an ambitious number of 4,400 people a year by 2024.

Our founder Octavia Hill knew that for people to thrive, they needed more than just good homes. It was this principle that led to us setting-up the Octavia Foundation 15 years ago, to provide a wider kind of support to people who were disadvantaged in our communities. 

Over the last 15 years, the work of the Octavia Foundation has grown substantially and has developed into a well-reputed service for delivering effective community support to thousands. We now work with local people in all sorts of ways to reduce isolation, to improve their personal resilience and confidence, or to help people to achieve their aspirations, and it is a crucial part of Octavia’s overall approach.   

It is for this reason that the work previously delivered by the Foundation was recently more formally brought into the wider organisation and since then, colleagues across the organisation have been collaborating to envision new ambitions and setting new targets for our community work to help us to support to even more local people. These aims, and how we will achieve them, have been set out in our new Communities Strategy. 

The launch event, held at Octavia’s community hub in North Kensington, The Reed, was a chance to celebrate the journey so far and to look forward to our exciting new plans to build on this legacy to help even more local people in need.

Speaking at the event Octavia CEO Sandra Skeete Said: “I believe it is thanks to our incredible people that our future ambitions are a realistic aim. It is their innovation, compassion and devotion to create new opportunities and improve existing services to help people throughout the years that has paved the way for us to do more”. 

You can read the Octavia Communities Strategy 2021-2024 here. It describes how we will continue to push for equality in our communities by ensuring that we: 

  • Support wellbeing, inclusion and tackle loneliness and isolation amongst older people.
  • Maximise opportunities through our community activity to provide better outcomes for people, fostering partnerships that deliver social value and build resilience.
  • Promote skills development and better life chances for younger people through inspiring opportunities.
  • Harness our services to target underlying inequality of outcomes for disadvantaged groups. We will make these commitments our priority for as long as is needed.
  • Raise funds, develop partnerships with local people, our community and business partners, and corporate business and attract volunteers to help us deliver this aim.
  • Expand our employment support and access to financial inclusion services to increase our impact, facilitate entrepreneurship and provide training to help people to develop their careers and take up new opportunities. 

We aim to reach 4,400 people per year by 2024, working with individuals and families for longer to have a greater impact, because we believe that everyone should have the same chances in life.

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