Michaelmas Newsletter 2025
Chairperson’s welcome
Hi all – welcome to the new academic year with ExVac, and this year’s first newsletter!
2024 was an incredibly exciting year for ExVac and our first after completing our transition to a Charitable Incorporated Organisation. This change has laid the foundations for ExVac’s longevity, and opens up new opportunities for us to evolve as a charity in the ways we engage both with the broader student community in Oxford, and the local community that we support.
Of course, none of this would be possible without the generosity of our donors! We want to once again say a massive thank you for your support and dedication, which lets us continue to do what we love and bring joy to children each year with our holidays.
We’re excited to keep you updated this year as we build partnerships with other organisations to create an ExVac Community of groups passionate about bringing the best for local young people.
ExVac is unique in so many ways, one of which is that it’s an invaluable and rare opportunity for University students to truly engage with the local community. Over the years ahead, we as a committee would like to deepen our year-round connections with the communities we work with, to build relationships of trust and maximise the good that we can do. One way we’ve already started to do this is reaching out to local charities beyond schools to expand our network for referrals, so that we can ensure that our trips reach those who need them the most.
Our committee has been hard at work with an action-packed term, from recruiting a new team of leaders to our annual Promise Auction, so please do read on to find out more – we can’t wait to show you what we’ve been up to!
Best wishes, Daniyal
Chairperson 2025-2026
Welcome notes from the president and treasurer
Hi, I’m Enya, a 3rd year CAMES student and this year’s President! I’ve been involved with ExVac since my first year and it’s truly the most rewarding part of my university experience; it’s such a privilege to be able to witness the positive change the holiday brings to the children throughout the week. I’m really excited for this role, which involves making sure all aspects of the charity are running smoothly in a practical and administrative sense, and helping ExVac to grow even more!
Hi! I’m Subhan, a third-year studying History and English, and this year I am Treasurer for ExVac. I first joined the charity as a Holiday Leader before becoming a Holiday Organiser, and I am now excited to take on the responsibility of managing and safeguarding ExVac’s accounts. My main priority is to ensure the charity’s long-term stability so that it can continue doing what it does best, putting smiles on children’s faces with as little financial stress as possible.
2025 Holidays
Our holidays this year were action-packed and full to the brim of laughs and smiles.
Our children embraced the outdoors with a raft-building session and an orienteering challenge – the boys were so keen that the leaders couldn’t keep up! Laser tag also went down like a storm, encouraging some healthy competition between the leaders and the children.
And our yearly trip to the dust museum – Paulton’s Park – was as amazing as always. It was heartwarming to see the inner speed demon of some of the children brought out by the rides, though naturally many trips to Peppa Pig World were made as well.
Going forward we want to build on the highlights of last year but also explore new activities and locations for our holidays potentially even beyond the New Forest.
Our 2025/2026 Committee
This year we’re excited to have a spectacular committee of volunteers all dedicated to making this year and these holidays the biggest and best for ExVac yet!
President – Enya Dunne
Treasurer – Subhan Aslam
Chairperson – Daniyal Vemuri
VP Leaders – Ginny Denmead
VP Social Services – Zoe Hildred
Secretary – Aaminah Zahrah
Executive Holiday Organiser – Max Port
Holiday Organisers – Ruben Treslove and Ophelia Robinson-Beesley
Internal Fundraisers – Tobi Sanyaolu and Nihal Bedi
External Fundraisers – Alina Turchyn and Nicole Bateman
Social Media Officer – Lucy Caulfield
Engagement & Inclusion Lead – Phoebe Lambard
Our 2025 AGM, where we handed over from the previous committee to the new!
Fresher’s Fair
ExVac is a core part of college life at Exeter, and the year always starts with making sure that the Freshers hear about the amazing work that we do and the brilliant experience that our holidays are for both leaders and children alike!
At our Freshers’ Fair stall on the high table, we met the newest additions to the college community, sharing ExVac stories and underlining how important the contributions of students were to making the magic happen.
We also had the chance to meet Freshers in a calmer and quieter environment at our Crafts & Cocoa event, which is becoming a stalwart of our Freshers’ Week calendar.
By the end of the week, with strong interest and the word of ExVac out to the college, we had once again put ExVac in pride of place at the centre of the college community, setting us up for the year to come.
Internal Fundraising
Our dynamic duo of Internal Fundraisers, Tobi and Nihal, have been working hard to put on exciting events this term to engage the college community and spread the ExVac joy!
ExVac Cocktails and Karaoke Pres 🎵
Freshers’ Week was also a chance for us to introduce the first-years to the tradition that is ExVac Cocktails! With the committee behind the bar, we raised funds, welcomed new faces, and kicked off the year with our trademark ExVac warmth.
ExVac Pub Quiz 🎭
Quickly becoming a cult classic in college, this battle of trivia pitted Exonian against Exonian – some of the quizzers were even more competitive than the kids on our holidays!
Promise Auction
The highlight of the ExVac year in college, our promise auction was a success once again! Committee in black tie, a live band, and the modern day Ant-and-Dec in the form of our Internal Fundraisers – what more could you want? From only drinking milk for 8 days in a row to shaved heads and accommodation in Barcelona, Exeter College never stops surprising us with its creativity, wackiness and generosity.
Overall this term, we’ve been able to raise over £1300 – a massive thank you goes to the support of the student body and the JCR!
The team hard at work at the Promise Auction
Collaborations!
VacProj
This term, I, Tobi and Nihal met with Aleena (President) and Aleksandra (Fundraising Events Lead) from VacProj to learn from each other and discuss how we can collaborate going forward.
VacProj is Lincoln College’s children’s charity that runs holidays for children during the summer. We work in the same space and are so passionate about the same thing – bringing joy and new opportunities to children – so working together is a no-brainer!
We loved hearing about VacProj’s jam-packed termcards of college events, and we’ll certainly be magpieing some of their ways of fundraising going forward, such as looking at holding a termly Casino Night with the MCR.
We also shared our experiences running the holidays and our learnings from the way each other’s committees were structured. Excitingly, our Executive Holiday Organiser Max will be collaborating with Aleena to coordinate our charities’ search for new Holiday locations, highlighting how linking ExVac with other groups in our community can elevate our capacity for impact.
Going forward next term, we hope to hold joint fundraising events with VacProj, particularly during the Turl Streets Arts Festival. This will be an amazing way to bring the Exeter and Lincoln College communities together!
Nihal, Tobi, Aleena and Aleksandra!
Local Community
Our VP Social Services Zoe has also been hard at work building ExVac’s relationships with local community organisations. In addition to our usual approach of reaching out to social workers and schools to find children whom our holidays can benefit the most, she’s been contacting local charities working with children like Parasol Projects to increase our outreach. This has led to some really meaningful ways to give back to the local community, such as helping to find student volunteers to run after-school clubs at the Rose Hill Junior Youth Club.
And ultimately, that’s what ExVac is about for us – the volunteers who make it all happen. ExVac is so valuable not only for the children we work with but also the students that make us up in part because it’s a chance to meaningfully give back to the local community of Oxford in a way that’s so rare to come across at this University.
This year, we’ll continue working hard to lay the foundations for an even more meaningful relationship between ExVac and this local community that we are so privileged to be a part of.
Preparing for this year’s Holidays
Preparations are well underway for this year’s holidays!
Zoe’s excellent work means that we already have strong interest for children to take part in our holidays, whilst our VP Leaders Ginny has rallied the Freshers to the cause of ExVac, recruiting an amazing new team of Holiday Leaders to create an unforgettable experience for our holidays this year.
We’ve also got accommodation and coaches booked as the backbone of our trip, and are putting together a fun-filled week of activities that’s sure to leave a big grin on the kids’ faces.
We need your help!
When ExVac became a CIO, GDPR compliance met that we were no longer able to keep the contact list that we had for ExVac alumni and other friends of ExVac who were part of our community.
This means that our alumni network, and our ability to keep members of ExVac all the way back to the start of the charity in 1982 involved, are currently fundamentally limited.
That’s why we’re asking you for your help!
If you are an ExVac alumni, we’d be so grateful if you could help us out even more by sharing this mailing list with your fellow alumni who were also part of ExVac during their time at Exeter College. This could be a chance to get back in touch with old friends and reminisce about your shared ExVac story!
To share this mailing list with other alumni (or anyone who would be interested in ExVac!), you can direct people to this link: http://eepurl.com/ibJrGn
This charity is such a truly unique and special experience that we all share, and we’d love to connect once again with everyone who’s been part of the ExVac family.
Donations:
As you all know, the work we do is entirely dependent on donations, so if you would like to give to our cause please use the link below!