Editors’ Welcome

A warm welcome to the OGA Chain 2021.

What an eventful year this has been for all of us, coming back out of another lockdown and adjusting to our ‘new normal.’ We hope you and your families are keeping safe and well. We are pleased to share with you some of the highlights from our past year at St Swithun’s, news from our wider community and our plans for the future.

We hope you will agree that this year, despite the pandemic, the OGA has gone from strength to strength.

We have grown our Community Hub hub.stswithuns.com which now includes a photo gallery, a wealth of information on the school’s history and recordings of inspirational career talks. Please take a look and join up in order to gain full access and to be able to search for St Swithun’s friends.

1,600 OGs and parents have now joined the St Swithun’s Community Hub and many are supporting our Professional Guidance Department events. We are running another programme of talks this year, so if you would like to offer your professional experience and wisdom to help inspire and encourage 6th formers and recent leavers, please email us at oga@stswithuns.com.

It has also been a pleasure to send out our monthly OGA e-news. We are always delighted to hear from you and share your updates with our community. Please keep in touch! This summer we were thrilled to have our first ‘in person’ event for months at Tichborne House. Our Garden Open Day, in aid of the Bramston Bursary Foundation, was a resounding success and we were grateful to enjoy such amazing surroundings in the summer sunshine. We can happily announce that, by kind permission of the owner of Tichborne House, we will be returning for another Garden Open Day on Sunday 12 June 2022. Please make a note in your diary!

September saw us back together again for Old Girls’ Day and it was wonderful to welcome online visitors as well as those who could attend in person.

If you would like to get more involved with the Old Girls’ Association, why not sign up to be an OGA Ambassador? There is no need to commit to regular meetings, you just need a willingness to be called upon once in a while to help out. We always appreciate a helping hand at an event, spreading the word about something coming up; encouraging support from others or simply acting as a sounding board and offering advice. If you are interested, please email us on oga@stswithuns.com. To hear from two of our current OGA Ambassadors please turn to page 26.

And finally, if you look at page 20 you can hear from OGs who have shared their recent experiences with us in our Spotlight features. You’ll learn about Zara flying around the world, Jenny painting in South Africa and Beth writing for the BBC. There’s also an article on three of our OG medics and their work during COVID.

We hope you enjoy this year’s publication… happy reading! ■

Kelly and Veryan (Editors) OGA@stswithuns.com