KEEN

Who we are

KEEN is an award-winning Oxford Charity started in 1988 (some of our current participants have been with us for over 30 years!) and growing as guided by our incredible community.

We think that everybody should have an equal opportunity in life to make friends, get active, and enjoy a range of interests. We welcome participants with a very wide range of additional needs, including physical and learning disabilities, learning difficulties and other additional needs.

Growing from our original sports sessions in 1988, we run in-person inclusive activities spanning everything from sports and games, to gardening to science experiments and performing arts. KEEN sessions are designed to be accessible, led by our participants interests and embracing fun and joy in all forms (time travelling dinosaurs anyone?). We have wonderful community partners who run inclusive workshops including trips to Oxford museums, workshops in Oxford Theatres and help us run our trips across the community (bowling, ice skating, swimming!).

Our Virtual Zoom team runs KEEN’s programme of Virtual Zoom activities (Quizzes, Yoga, choir, baking, Storytime, talent shows and more) - with additional sessions designed and run by our participants about their favourite passions - from cheerleading to their favourite musicals.

Friendship shouldn’t be contained to just our sessions, and so our Community Buddies programme was born. The programme created 1-1 connections based on shared interests between individuals with and without additional needs. Post-Covid we are looking to re-establish this, where buddies meet up and do fun activities of their choice, from a trip to the cinema or a walk in the park, to joining a sports club together. 

All our participants deserve to be able to access their communities, exactly as the wonderful people they are. Our projects for inclusion grew from the ideas of our communities on difficulties they face in day-to-day life, and the ways they saw to address this. We work with other local organisations to create accessible resources, support other organisations to be more inclusive and empower our young people and adults to achieve their goals, and to tell us what our next goals should be.

Our core value has and always will be: Everybody belongs at KEEN.