Community First Oxfordshire

Who we are

Community First Oxfordshire is a community development and placemaking charity. With over 100 years of working with Oxfordshire’s communities, we offer services that support people and places across the county.

Community First Oxfordshire was the first rural community council in England. It initially focused on arts and literature and the provision of public libraries and village halls. However, in alignment with a growing appetite for social change, the charity soon began addressing a broader spectrum of societal needs which now includes affordable housing, community planning and stewardship, accessible health, community infrastructure and assets, community research and local enterprise.

Our culture and values

Our values and practices are rooted in human rights, social justice, and respect for diversity. We aspire to being a diverse, inclusive, and responsible organisation. These values are the golden threads running through Community First activity.

We respect and value our individual characteristics and differences, allowing staff to fully realise their potential. Our aim is to have a workforce and a Board of Trustees that can reflect and best understand the communities we serve.

We are committed to being inclusive, accessible, and fair in the way we design and deliver our services and to always treat everyone with openness and respect.

1.       Equality, equity, diversity, and inclusion

We want to genuinely connect and work with all people from all backgrounds who live in a place, a community. We recognise that we do not all start from the same place and need to make adjustments for inequities to create a fairer society. We value the benefits of different perspectives, backgrounds, and experiences, identifying under-representation and taking active steps to address it.

We make every effort to create welcoming spaces for all, improving accessibility and enabling diversity. We have developed an EEDI and Equal Opportunities Policy and an EEDI Action Plan to hold ourselves accountable to our values and allow for an ongoing appraisal.

2.      Integrity

To help ground us, we go back to our local knowledge and research with community members to make sure we are doing the right thing at the right time. We must be trusted to keep our word.

3.      Adaptable

We are always open to change and to adapt, whether that’s making changes within our own organisation or with others. To lead by example and be adaptable to change is a very important value for CFO. We engage with and listen to the needs of diverse individuals and communities. We advocate and support and help put into place what our communities are telling us. 

4.      Accountable

We ensure that we carry out our work with honesty and transparency. We are accountable to our members, funders and to each community we work with.

Equality, diversity and inclusion policy

Community First Oxfordshire is a community development and placemaking charity. Our values and practices are rooted in human rights, social justice, and respect for diversity.

We are committed to being inclusive, accessible, and fair in the way we design and deliver our services and to always treating everyone with openness and respect.

As an employer, we aspire to being a diverse, inclusive, and responsible organisation. We respect and value our individual characteristics and differences, whether visible or not, allowing staff to fully realise their potential. We are committed to a policy of treating all our employees and job applicants equally. Our aim is to have a workforce that can reflect and best understand the communities we serve.

We recognise that many people are discriminated against in their daily lives. We are opposed to discrimination in all its forms and will take all necessary steps to eliminate discriminatory practices. This includes in our recruitment process and working environment.  

The foundations of our policy are based on equity, diversity, and inclusion, as well as an understanding of discriminatory practices.

Equity: recognising that we do not all start from the same place, and making adjustments for inequities to create a fairer society.

Diversity: valuing the benefits of different perspectives, backgrounds, and experiences. Identifying under-representation and taking active steps to address it.

Inclusion: creating welcoming spaces for all, improving accessibility, and enabling diversity.

Discriminatory practices include: • Discrimination - unjust treatment of someone because of a particular characteristic, real or perceived. Discrimination can result not only from conscious acts, but also due to unconscious bias and circumstantial factors. • Prejudice - assumptions or opinions about someone because of a particular characteristic, real or perceived. • Intolerance - unwillingness to respect someone. • Bullying and harassment - behaviour which intimidates or humiliates someone, including abusive language and derogatory jokes. If this is repeated, it may be bullying. • Exclusionary language – words or phrases which reject or devalue people, often based on bias. For example, phrases such as “man up” which can be attached to mental health stigma and gender stereotypes.

These principles are particularly important in relation to the nationally recognised protected characteristics of age, gender, marriage/ pregnancy status, disability, race, religion or belief, sex, and sexual orientation. We will work to ensure that no employee or job applicant is discriminated against on these bases.