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Witney, Carterton and Chipping Norton GROUP Thursday, January 4 - Wednesday, January 10, 2018
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oxfordshireguardian.co.uk
Looking back on a great year for Play2Give
Festive highs and lows for Oxford United
Pages 12&13
Sport
New youth support service set to help after closure of Base 33 By Owen Hughes
Picture: @JavierLlamas11
VULNERABLE young people in west Oxfordshire who were left isolated after the closure of a muchloved youth charity will be able to turn to a new support service later this month. The new Youth Work Engagement initiative has been set up by Witneybased Synolos in response to the shock closure of Base 33 in December. Synolos has worked with more than 400 people since it was founded in 2010, almost a quarter of whom were under the age of 16. But the award-winning social enterprise will start much smaller in scale than Base 33, which supported hundreds of young people before it declared itself insolvent. A volunteer youth worker will be based at the new Synolos building on Station Lane offering drug advice and referrals, help for people struggling with depression and other tailored support. Barry Ingleton, owner and founder of Synolos, worked closely with Base 33 and was shocked when it shut its doors having only met with the youth charity a week earlier. “Base 33 closed very dramatically and very quickly out of the blue,” he said. “We feel that we need to respond to that by starting to offer a service
within our capacity that addresses the concerns of young people. “We’re trying to offer a little bit of hope for those in the short term to say ‘don’t worry, after Christmas there is something there’, but also we could actually create something quite wonderful in the long term.” Mr Ingleton said he will use the initiative to assess what the level of need is for west Oxfordshire and “perhaps with the support of the local community and businesses build a provision that is sustainable”. Unlike charities, the Witney enterprise does not fundraise and instead relies on contract work to support its projects. If the project is successful, Synolos will try to source funding from the likes of West Oxfordshire District Council and the Big Lottery Fund. Synolos lost more than 50 per cent of its funding in 2015 due to cuts resulting from government changes. But Mr Ingleton remains positive about the lifeline he and his team of six are providing young people in the area. He said: “The cuts could have closed us, but they didn’t. “We’ve worked very hard to the point that now, two years later, we’ve moved to premises three times bigger than our old space. “What we’ve learnt is that if there’s a will, there’s always a way to make things work.”
Tally ho! Hundreds enjoy traditional hunt HUNDREDS of people turned out in Chipping Norton to see off the traditional Heythrop Hunt. Riders and hounds gathered in Market Place for the annual Boxing Day meet, held for the
192nd year, with riders only following a scent trail as a result of the Hunting Act, which was introduced in 2004. Former Prime Minister and Witney MP David Cameron rode
with the hunt six times. The area covered by the hunt takes in large parts of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire. The event has been criticised by animal rights campaigners.
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WINTER IS HERE!