SOS Champions
What is SOS?
Their Finest Hour announced a key initiative entitled 'SOS: Save Our Stories' for November 2023. Leading up to, during, and just after Remembrance Weekend (11-12 November 2023), we asked everyone to make one big effort to save at least one story or item related to the Second World War by sending it to us to become part of our collection and preserving it for future generations.
To help with this we recruited an army of SOS Champions.
What is an SOS Champion?
SOS Champions encourage people to make that one big effort to preserve a Second World War story.
You can do as little or as much as you want, but here is a list of suggestions:
- Promote and advertise the ‘Save our Stories’ around your neighbourhood. You could tell people, put up some of our posters, put items in local newsletters or newspapers, and/or post on local social media groups (e.g. ‘What’s on …’ in Facebook). You could reach out to congregations, care homes, youth groups (e.g. Scouts/Guides etc), and anyone who may be able to help out in collecting stories. Whichever way suits you the best!
- Actively seek out people in your area who may have stories, memories and/or objects that they would be happy to add to our archive. You may know people who have mentioned their family’s war story, are of an age to have lived through the war or had parents who did, know a lot about your local history, or something else. You may know of local care homes or elderly support groups who would like to help. In particular, we would like to hear from those people whose stories are often forgotten: women, people on the home front, children who lived through the period, and stories from under-represented communities who did so much for the war effort (e.g. South Asian, Afro-Caribbean, Chinese communities).
- Help individuals to assemble and to send us their story. Help people to complete the key forms, take photos of any objects that they have (e.g. letters, pages of diaries, etc), and record them speaking about their story. Then help them to upload it all on our website or send it to us by another means (see below ‘How do I send the stories to you?’).
- And, of course, send us your own story!
How do I send the stories to you?
You can send the stories to us, or help someone do this, through our web form which is available here.
If uploading through the web is difficult, or you have any questions, then please let us know by emailing us at theirfinesthour@ell.ox.ac.uk.
