This week marks International Men’s Day (19 November). A global day highlighting positive male role models and raising awareness of men’s well-being.
The International Men’s Day theme for 2022 is ‘helping men and boys’. As a homelessness charity, many of our services do just this: through our drop-ins, emergency accommodation project, working with young men in our supported flats across the North East and south London and the baby boys who come with their mothers into our specialist mum-and-baby housing.
And some our longest serving members of staff are men.
Here, we speak to some of them about why they are so dedicated to Oasis Community Housing.
Phil Conn, Director of Chaplaincy
How did you hear about your job with Oasis Community Housing?
My wife was working for Oasis Community Housing (Aquila Way, at the time) and mentioned that there was an ambition to set up a new day service in Gateshead and I became really interested in the vision behind the project, so I applied. Initially I wasn’t successful at interview, but a few things changed over a couple of months and I ended up in the job, setting up the project. The rest, as they say, is history!
What were you doing before joining Oasis Community Housing?
I managed youth services for a voluntary community sector organisation in Sunderland.
What is the best thing about working at Oasis Community Housing /within your project?
The best things for me is the way we go about our work. I think we put our values to work, they’re not just words or snappy statements, our teams live and breathe them and it makes a huge difference to the people we serve and to each other.
What man do you admire, or who inspires you the most and why?
I immediately think of my (now retired) church leader, Jim, who has always been a great source of encouragement and support for decades now. He’s always seen the best in me, I’d like to think my best qualities are modelled on his example.
David Smith, Chief Executive
How did you hear about your job with Oasis Community Housing?
I’d been working in international development for about eight years, much of it spend overseas, and I was starting to feel that I needed to work where I live – here, in the North East of England.
A friend sent me the Chief Executive role, which I thought sounded really interested. Although I’d worked for in the charity sector for 20 years, I’d never worked in homelessness, but its an issue I’ve always felt passionately about, so I applied.
What were you doing before joining Oasis Community Housing?
I was Head of International Programmes for Bible Society and my job was to run a $5M international grant-making programme with partners all around the world. So, I spent my time travelling to South America, Africa, Europe and Asia to see how the funds we’d raised were being dispersed to and spent by those projects, which were focused on the translation of and promotion of the Bible.
What is the best thing about working at Oasis Community Housing?
There are a lot of good things! It’s hard to narrow it down to one. But one stand-out for me at Oasis Community Housing is the sense of ‘team’ from the 100-or-so staff that we have and everyone’s shared commitment to the charity.
What does International Men’s Day mean to you?
It’s not a day I usually mark, but I think its important for men to have space and place to be together, to open up about what it means to be a man in the 21st century.
What man do you admire, or who inspires you the most and why?
There are lots of people who inspire me, many of whome are men. One of the men who has been a great inspiration to me is Martin Luther King Jr. and the campaign he led for civil rights in 1960s America. I admire him for standing up for what he beliveed in, despite the cost to himself, in a bid to change people’s lives for the better.
Luke Elton, Head of Service Improvement
How did you hear about your job with Oasis Community Housing?
I applied for a job with another organisation as a Communications Officer. I know very little about communications now, but knew even less then! They were working on setting up the Social Impact Bond (SIB) Project for those with entrenched experiences of homelessness in partnership with Oasis Aquila Housing – as we were known then – so they got in touch to say ‘no thanks’ for the original job application, but invited me to a joint assessment centre for the SIB project and I ended up getting that role and being employed by Oasis Aquila Housing.
What were you doing before joining Oasis Community Housing?
I was living in Aberdeen and working for the City Council’s Housing department. I met Molly, now my wife, while I was up there and we moved home (home for me, a new home for her) when we found out we were expecting our first child.
What is the best thing about working at Oasis Community Housing?
For me, it is the privilege of having been able to meet all the amazing and inspiring people I’ve met over these last few years, from colleagues to those we support. Finding hope, strength and humour in difficult circumstances has been really important.
What does International Men’s Day mean to you?
International Men’s Day doesn’t mean a lot to me in all honesty. It’s not a day I pay any attention to. I have thought about what being a man has meant for previous generations in my family who, for example, have had to do things like work down mines, work on dockyards and go to war. It’s important we recognise their struggle, I think.
I’ve always been struck by old photos of men in my family whose lives were cut short by where they found themselves and when. There is one great, great uncle who everyone thinks looks a lot like me – I know he died in the Somme. There are other stories which have lived on through generations in my family too, some of which are the sort of things that would make a film. I can’t help but think about these men and how things would have been for me had I been there at that time.
What man do you admire, or who inspires you the most and why?
There are a lot of men, who I won’t name, who I have seen overcome adversity and change the course of their life and now share their strength with others. They all have my massive admiration and gratitude for what they do every day for themselves and others.
David Foster, Project Team Leader, Basis Gateshead
How did you hear about/get your job with Oasis Community Housing?
I did some volunteering years ago for Aquila Way – the charity’s original name – and always loved that there was a Christian homelessness charity working in Gateshead. I took voluntary redundancy from my last job in October 2017 and saw the role within the Business Development Unit come up in Christmas 2017, which seemed ideal.
What were you doing before joining Oasis Community Housing?
For 16 years I worked at the National Lottery Community Fund. It was a great place to work, and I had a number of different roles there. It really brought to light the impact the voluntary sector makes in the lives of very vulnerable people across the UK.
What is the best thing about working at Oasis Community Housing?
The best thing about working at Oasis Community Housing is the people. Everyone seems to be genuinely in it for the right reasons and keen to help people facing homelessness. I think that stems from our values and ethos. We have the best Busniess Development Unit team we’ve ever had at the moment. Everyone is an expert in their own field of fundraising and every year more and more people, businesses, community organisations and charitable trusts learn about the work we do. And they’re all great people to work with on a daily basis.
What does International Men’s Day mean to you?
The day is an opportunity to showcase what it means to be a good role model, a good influence and a good man. The narrative around what it means to be a man is as fluid as it has ever been. In some ways this is good because it brings more freedom and opportunity for men to define themselves according to their own values, talents and interests. However, it also brings confusion. Especially for young boys and men growing up in the world. And sadly there aren’t many occasions like International Men’s Day where the concept of manhood and what it means to be a man in the early 21st century is given space to be considered.
What man do you admire, or who inspires you the most and why?
I always admire those who were brave and determined enough to be a lone voice against socially accepted injustice and tyranny. People who made decisions, worked and sometimes put their lives on the line to build the society we have today, or in some cases hope to have one day. So there are the obvious ones like William Wilberforce or Martin Luther King Jr. But some lesser known individuals whose stories I’ve come across are László Tőkés, a Hungarian pastor whose resistance played a key role in starting the overthrow of Nicolae Ceaușescu in Romania in 1989, and more recently Alexei Navalny who is one of the lead opposition figures in Russia and who returned to Russia in 2021 after being poisoned by Putin’s Regime only to be imprisoned. Volodymyr Zelensky’s quote, “The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride,” is a good one – if only we had more inspiring politicians like that in the UK.
Find out more about the people behind the scenes of our charity >