Bursary awards

The school welcomed #OldCryptians Richard Briggs and Richard Browning into school on the 29th June for the annual award of the OC bursaries to ten students. Well done to them all and our thanks to the generosity of the OC Club.

On yer bike Briggs – update

Richard has closed the crowdfunding page and has raised well over £600 (plus a further £100 in Giftaid) for the Bursary Fund,

OCC stalwart and budding Eddie Merckx has completed a 400+ miles cycling trip to explore the countryside of Northern Ireland and to sample sea cliffs on the Wild Atlantic Way.  He is raising money for an education charity that has been running for 21 years.

The Crypt School in Gloucester sets high standards but many aspirational pupils come from homes where money is scarce. Here the OCC Centenary Bursary Fund can help.

“I start and finish in Belfast and hope to learn more about this city at election time when many questions are being asked about Northern Ireland and its future. My story will form the basis of a Cryptian article.”

Richard Briggs (1955-63)

April eNews

From the President

Dear Members,

Welcome to another eNews. Last week we had our AGM and I had hoped to have had an “in person” AGM at the school but covid got in the way as myself and Nick Dyer, the head, both succumbed to it. Hopefully 2023 will see us all be together again for an AGM.

The OCC and the 1539 Foundation

For those of you who didn’t tune in online I wanted to let you know about the work that has been going on over the future of the club in light of the school creating the 1539 Foundation. This has been set up with an education charity to act as a hub for students, alumni and members of the OCC. It works in a similar way to Facebook and connects students and alumni with each other. The initial plan was for it to publicise job opportunities, mentoring from alumni in careers with all of the contacts in one place. Different groups within the foundation can be set up – such as year groups, sports groups etc and members can choose to part of whatever they wish.

There will also be 2-3 social events organised throughout the year based on what different groups emerge. This all sounds a familiar setup and obviously faced the committee with a challenge.

I met with the head a couple of times and along with other members of the committee we undertook a good deal of work to see what that meant for the OCC and how we would have to respond. That culminated earlier this year with the publication of a paper to the committee with three options about the future. One would be to let the 1539 Foundation effectively take on the work of the OCC and for the OCC to fold, another was for the OCC to create a new organisation that would bring the OCC and The Bursary Fund together with paid subscriptions.

What next?

In the end of the committee decided on an option where we will continue as the OCC and effectively become a group within the Foundation hub.  The Foundation itself offers resources as it has a part time paid administrator who works for the school links with other schools organisations and the technology platform that simply is not possible for the Old Cryptians as a standalone organisation. That will offer:

• Mentors and links for new foundation members
• A managed communications hub for OC’s members
• Support for organising social occasions such as the annual dinner that may or may not include non-OC foundation members.
• The Presidential ceremonial role will continue, as now, within school services as well as provide editorial/publication of The Cryptian.
• We have no subscriptions but aim to break even on the annual dinner. This would have little impact or change on what we do now apart from how we organise membership.

Actions

So, this is a potentially big change for the club but it’s not a final done deal yet. There is still a lot of work to do before this all happens. We need a more formal proposal and guidelines about how it will work which will then be put to the membership. I’ll report back in the coming months as we progress.

Annual dinner

Finally a reminder from me that the annual dinner is still planned for June 18th at St Mary de Crypt. We’ll have full details and ticket information as soon as we get everything sorted. So please keep the date free!

Steve
OCC President
president@oldcryptians.org

Raising money for The Bursary Fund

The easy way

By changing the URL you use to access Amazon you could be donating 0.5% of the purchase price to the Bursary Fund every time you shop.  So far, OCs have raised £75 with no effort required!  Next time you are tempted to cycle Land’s End to John O’Groats to raise money for the bursary, think again and set up the the Amazon way – no blisters, no planning, no effort.

The simplest way to do this is to use the smile.amazon.co.uk from any PC, laptop or mobile device.  If this is your first time there, you will be asked to accept cookies – I recommend not accepting all cookies and use the confirm my choice option.  Annoyingly this takes you away from the page you want to be on,  So, go back to https://smile.amazon.co.uk/ch/1094627-0 and select Start Shopping.

You may need to log in at this point, but from now on you should be raising money each time you shop at https://smile.amazon.co.uk/ch/1094627-0

If you use the Amazon app on an Android phone/tablet you can set up smile.amazon in the Settings.

1. Check that you have the latest version of the Amazon app. Update instructions are here.
2. Open the Amazon Shopping app on your device.
3. Login.
4. Go into the main menu of the Amazon Shopping app and tap into ‘Settings’.
5. Tap ‘AmazonSmile’ and follow the on-screen instructions to turn Amazon Smile on.

The instructions seem to suggest that it is the same for the iPhone/iPad app, but I don’t see it on my phone.  Instead I have saved the page using “Add to home screen” from the share options.  This saves the page you are looking at as a new “app” on your home screen (with the Amazon Smile logo).