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Work for Oxfam Day

Fancy being a water engineer? Hygiene promoter? Being a life-saver… without leaving your day job? Now you can. 

Work for Oxfam Day is Oxfam's employee-giving initiative, enabling you and your colleagues to saves lives by donating an hour, half a day, or a day's pay. On a dedicated day your company has chosen, you'll be working alongside us to help fight poverty across the world.

And you don't even have to leave your desk.

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Video: Work for Oxfam day

Video: Work for Oxfam day

How it works

Work for Oxfam Day is really simple - we'll provide everything you need to carry it out and we can provide extras like team-building exercises if that's what you want.

Once your organisation has agreed to do it and set a date, we'll provide a registration web page for people, some posters and fun stuff to really make you feel part of our work and explain how your money will help, and an email from the CEO or Senior Management, encouraging staff to sign up.

On the day itself we'll send out an email - all you'll have to do is click on the link and choose your shift. Or delete if you don't want to participate.

We'll liaise with your HR department to ensure everything's correct, and then…

The donation comes from your next payslip. It works through Payroll Giving - most organisations have this already, but don't worry if you don't. We'll help you set it up.

We'll let you know how much you've raised and how that will help people across the world.

Not enough? If you want to make a song and dance of Work for Oxfam Day, we can do that too. Team-building exercises, learning activities, talks and films - we'll work with you to provide the day you're looking for.

If you want to take part in Work for Oxfam Day, send us an email, or text WORK to 70066 and we'll call you back.

Who you'll be working with

When you give to Oxfam, you're part of the wider Oxfam team. That means you're fighting poverty alongside some amazing people: 

Photo 1/10 photo by: Matloob Ali

Rescue boat driver. You could be helping the effort in Pakistan to help move flood-affected families to safe, dry land. And your support could help to distribute essential household kits, which include buckets and water purification tablets to help prevent the spread of disease.

  • <b>Rescue boat driver.</b> You could be helping the effort in Pakistan to help move flood-affected families to safe, dry land. And your support could help to distribute essential household kits, which include buckets and water purification tablets to help prevent the spread of disease.
  • You could be working alongside an <b>emergency radio operator</b> like Shahia in Bangladesh. Shahia uses a radio provided by Oxfam to pass on vital early warnings about floods - which means people have time to pack up, move livestock to higher places and go to flood shelters.
  • <b>Food security advisor</b> In emergency situations, we don't like to distibute food if we can help it. It damages local markets and people prefer to support themslves. Our emergency food security advisors work out the best way to get food to people in each situation. Sometimes that means providing seeds and tools for people to grow their food. Other times, like in Haiti, it means setting up schemes like community canteens.
  • You could be working alongside a <b>hygiene promoter</b> like Audrey Andwati. In an emergency, one of the biggest killers is illness. In Dadaab, the world's largest refugee camp, where an outbreak of cholera has now struck, hygiene is a question of life and death. But hygiene probably isn't first thing on your mind when you're trying to find food and water to stay alive. Hygiene promoters like Audrey work with camp residents to highlight the importance of keeping healthy and washing their hands.
  • <b>Toilet leader</b> When disaster hits, a good, safe loo is vital. It will help to prevent the spread of water-borne diseases, and help to provide a bit of much-needed privacy. We give local people a source of income to look after the loos and make sure families have got clean facilities and taps to wash their hands. It takes a lot of dedication, patience and attention to detail to do this job.
  • <b>Water engineer</b> By working for Oxfam for the day, you could help to provide clean water to thousands of people affected by an emergnecy. Our water engineers work out the best way to provide water in every situation - whether than is trucking water in, building boreholes, or rehabilitating water sources.

What your day's work can buy

£16  could buy 120 bars of soap.

£50  could build a latrine.

£100  could buy life-saving medicines