The Oxford Unlocked raffle launched on Monday 12 April, to coincide with opening of non-essential shops and outside hospitality. Tickets cost £2 each. Winners will be selected via a digital draw on Monday 17 May.
The raffle prizes are collectively worth over £2000 and have all been donated by local businesses. Examples of some of the prizes include a weekend away in the Cotswolds, tickets to Truck Festival and a Touring Bike worth almost £900! It is hoped the raffle will provide some welcome promotion of local businesses as restrictions ease this spring.
Tingewick is a charity which is run by medical students at the University of Oxford whilst they work hard across hospitals in Oxfordshire to earn their degrees. Each year, the group selects two charities to support through a range of different fundraising events, culminating in the annual Christmas pantomime, which has been a central tradition of the medical school since 1939. This year the group is supporting Oxford Hospitals Charity, which supports Oxford’s NHS Hospitals, and Calon Hearts, the leading heart charity in Wales.
Oxford University’s medical students have joined NHS staff on the frontline in the fight against covid by working in local hospitals and local GP surgeries. Oxford medical students have played a key role in fighting the pandemic inlucidng by working shifts in intensive care, delivering covid vaccinations and supporting the local testing regime. Now these same students are running a raffle to raise much needed funds for leading health charities supporting people when they need it most.
The pandemic has put a huge strain on the NHS and has been undoubtedly difficult for the staff members and patients in Oxford where the second wave has hit particularly hard. With more than double the number of COVID patients compared to last year’s peak, the staff are exhausted but nonetheless have risen to this insurmountable challenge.
Oxford Hospitals Charity has helped to make a real difference to the NHS staff working to save lives and to the patients being cared for in this incredibly difficult time. Throughout the pandemic, many of the medical students involved with Tingewick have been volunteering on the front line in intensive care, and would have struggled to get through it without the support provided by Oxford Hospitals Charity. During the COVID-19 pandemic, fundraising for the Oxford Hospitals charity has provided welfare items to boost morale, funded extra psychological support for staff working on the frontline and funded specialist equipment to support patients in our hospitals.
Tingewick’s second chosen charity is Calon Hearts, in memory of a much-loved and greatly missed friend and medical student Oxford University, Issie Mogg, a fellow medical student who died suddenly of an undiagnosed heart condition in 2018. Calon Hearts is the leading heart charity in Wales where Issie grew up and where cardiovascular disease accounts for a third of all deaths. At least 12 healthy people like Issie die each week in the UK from an undiagnosed heart condition. The vision of Calon hearts is a future where nobody in Wales dies prematurely from heart disease and, though Issie couldn’t be saved, Oxford University medics are fundraising for Calon Hearts to help save other young people’s lives. The Charity works to tackle premature heart disease by placing defibrillators in communities and delivering CPR and defibrillator training in Wales.
We're pleased to be launching our flagship raffle this Spring to raise much needed funds for two charities close to the heart of Oxford medics, Oxford Hospitals Charities and Calon Hearts. As medical students, supporting our hospitals however we can is always incredibly important to us, and in the current climate it is more important than ever, that's why we've chosen to fundraise for Oxford Hospitals Charity this year. We're supporting Calon Hearts to improve defibrillator access across Wales; this is hugely personal to all of us, and we hope that our fundraising efforts this year will be a fitting tribute to our friend Issie - Meirian Evans, Producer of Tingewick Society and 4th year Medical Student at University of Oxford