29/10/10…..Working from home? You?re not alone

A NEW winter project from Oxfordshire Rural Community Council is aiming to break the rural isolation of people who work from home.

At this time of the year if you work for yourself at home, the sense of being on your own can be overwhelming. Running a business from home is hugely popular in Oxfordshire ? 58% of the people in home-based businesses in rural areas are self-employed ? but people often miss the social and professional buzz of a workplace. Yet there are hundreds of people in our villages who work from home in a spare room or garden shed near you! The answer is to get together.

Since it first opened its doors in the 1920s the ORCC has been helping people in rural Oxfordshire get together to work out their problems from keeping the village shop or pub open to rebuilding village halls and supporting community projects and planning. Now ORCC is encouraging people who work from home to get together to tackle the issues that concern them from social contact to better broadband.

The Adderbury Friday Club which meets every month at The Bell, is celebrating its 10th anniversary this October. Nick Fennell, the founder and organiser of is happy to advise new groups thinking of setting up.

Would you like to hold a local informal get together of people involved in home-based working or businesses in your village? Would you come along to a group that existed in your community, but don?t have time to organise one? If you like the sound of this, and would like to be involved, or simply to be kept in touch with developments, call or email

Catharine Arakelian, Business and Community Links Worker, ORCC
catharine.arakelian@oxonrcc.org.uk 01865 883191

SOURCE: Press release