Our Values

Our values inform the way we work. These values and our explanations of them came from our visioning weekend in Settle in 2007. We hope these bullet points will help you get an idea of what Oblong is about!

Empowerment

• True empowerment comes from gaining the skills, knowledge and confidence to participate equally within society.
• Oblong trusts people to identify problems and find solutions about the issues that affect their community.
• We will create an environment that raises peoples expectations of their full potential and helps them fulfil it.

Collectivism

• Sharing appropriate and timely information to allow transparent informed collective decision making
• An open and accessible working structure for everyone to get involved in
• Collective working means paid staff work in a non-hierarchical way and are accountable to all centre users through collective meetings and supervision.
• Collective working makes real our commitment to equality in our day to day lives

Sustainability

• Oblong strives to be sustainable in every way; environmentally, socially and economically.
• We strives to have the lowest possible environmental impact in our day to day working practice.
• We strive to have multiple income sources and adequate funds to ensure a continued quality service
• We strive to work with a wide range of people to achieve their full potential and enable them to sustain their communities

Directed by People

• Oblong provides the skills, resources, advice and opportunities to individuals and community groups to achieve their aims.
• Through collective working Oblong ensures its services are directed by its members

Equality

• We believe that people’s chances to fulfil their potential are restricted in wider society by discrimination based on many things (including class, education, gender, race, religion, sexuality, disabilities)
• Oblong actively challenges discrimination by ensuring that our structures do not reflect those that create those inequalities
• All paid staff have the same hourly wage
• No-one in Oblong is too important not to clean the bogs
• Staff and volunteers have the same voting rights at meetings
• Although the law gives ultimate responsibility and power to Board of Directors, the board will usually exact the will of the collective.
• Services and facilities will be made as accessible to our beneficiaries possible
• We will continually challenge prejudices and inequality within Oblong and questioning how we work

Flexibility

• Our structures allow us to respond quickly to the changing needs of the people that use Oblong its members
• Oblong takes account of the personal needs of staff and volunteers
• Oblong hopes that staff volunteers in their practices are flexible to meet the needs of Oblong and its members