I was scanning the recent government paper on Levelling Up recently and came across this...

For levelling up to mean something to people in their daily lives, we need to reach into every community in the country, from city centres to rural areas, in order to start to rebuild social capital and self-reliance in our most abandoned neighbourhoods. This needs to flow through central and local government, through MPs and their local offices, philanthropists, volunteers, schools, GPs and other community leaders. We will pilot a set of Community Covenant approaches: new agreements between councils, public bodies and communities themselves to empower communities to shape the regeneration of their areas and improve public services.

Much of the above resonates very strongly with the role of Community Foundations:

• seeking to bring together those with resources and local communities to improve neighbourhoods
• working to coordinate efforts and bring together resources from philanthropists, businesses and statutory partners
• trying to reach all communities urban and rural

Grand ambitions and hope that we in Oxfordshire can build on the improvements we've seen through the pandemic in terms of coordination, reduced organisational boundaries and philanthropic investment to take advantage of any opportunities that come tto improve our local area