It costs around £100,000 a year just to keep Oasisplay running, the insurance, the utilities, the premises, the essentials that keep us open and safe. That’s without staff costs. No grant covers that. Friends do.

That is what Friends of Oasisplay is for. Not crisis. Not a one-off rescue. A community of people keeping this place standing, month after month, so it is here for the children who are not even born yet, the way it was here for the parents who now send their own children through our gates.

A monthly gift of £5, £10 or £20 doesn’t sound like much. But 100 Friends giving £10 a month is £12,000 a year. Enough Friends, and the gates stay open through the hardest winter, whatever happens with grants and councils.

Giving Tiers

£5 per month - Covers a couple of staff safeguarding checks a year. Small things that keep every child safe.

£10 per month - Keeps the electrics on at one of our sites for two whole weeks. Picture the Easter holidays, food, music and lights, kids everywhere.

£20 per month - Covers a year of health and safety checks across two of our sites. The unglamorous stuff nobody funds but everyone needs.

£30 per month - Keeps the water running at one site for five months. Taps, toilets, sanitation and washing up after cooking. The basics that make a place liveable. A place that knows you

We have been running free play and youth services in Lambeth for a long time. It is not just adventure play. It is karting and mechanics for teenagers, a nature garden, youth nights, mentoring, holiday schemes. Open to everyone from age 5 to 25, including disabled children and young people who are too often left out everywhere else.

In that time we have got to know hundreds of children and families. Really know them. We know who has had a hard week. We know whose mum is struggling. We know which children run through the gate like they have been waiting all day, because they have been.

What we do

What happens here is simple, and it is everything. Children and young people get active and outdoors. They find ways to handle what they are feeling. They build skills, confidence and a sense of what they could become. And they belong to something, in a community that too often leaves them out.

A ten-year-old who met a staff member who could skateboard found something that clicked, then found drawing too. He has chosen graphics at secondary school. A seven-year-old who would not speak loud enough to be heard at school became, at Oasis, bubbly and talkative, eating the food she had helped to cook. A boy heading for school exclusion was finally assessed and given the right support, because Oasis staff knew his every trigger and what calmed him.

Why become a Friend

Everything we offer is free. That means everything we offer depends on people who believe in it. For the families who find us, free is not a detail. It is everything.

Although grants and council funding pay for sessions and projects. They almost never pay to keep the organisation standing. The heating. The electricity. The water. The insurance. The everyday essentials that have to be paid before a single child walks through the gate.

What Friends Receive

Being a Friend means you are part of the community that keeps this place alive. In practical terms:

A personal letter from our Director, three times a year. Honest and warm, telling you what your support has made possible.

A look behind the scenes at what Friends’ giving funded that year, in plain language.

An open invitation to visit a site, see the work for yourself and meet the team.

The knowledge that you are part of something that has been here for 50 years and, with you, will be here for 50 more.

Why your support matters

Oasisplay has been here for over 50 years because people in this community believed it was worth keeping. If you believe that too, join us.

Set up a monthly gift below. We think once you see what it makes possible, you’ll want to stay.