Great Scot May 2020 Great Scot 159_MAY 2020_ONLINE_V3 | Page 62

OSCA
COMMUNICATING AND
STAYING CONNECTED
New opportunities for OSCA members to connect, and give back
MR JAMES DOUGLAS ('84)
OSCA PRESIDENT
The Scotch Family cares about the School and is
strongly engaged in all aspects of its life – this is one
of the primary reasons Scotch is a great school. OSCA
also strongly believes in the importance of engagement,
and during 2020 we are pursuing a number of initiatives
that we hope will increase engagement throughout our
community.
In 2019 the OSCA Council revitalised and focused
its strategy into three key areas: providing reasons to
connect, providing places to connect, and providing
opportunities to give back.
OSCA TEAM: ANNIKA
DUSEK, SCOTT
MONTGOMERY ('85)
AND CAROLINE
TAYLOR
62
We recognised that we needed to do more to help
our community connect online – our existing static
website and social media presence were simply not
enough. As a result, in late 2019 we launched a new
community platform – OSCAconnect (OSCAconnect.
com.au) – which is an online and mobile community
platform designed to enable Old Boys to communicate
and stay connected. This new platform is playing
an important role in our strategy of developing new
opportunities for OSCA members to connect, as well as
enabling them to give back.
OSCAconnect enables Old Boys to stay in touch
with the School, with OSCA and with our rich variety of
branches, clubs and societies, who via this platform can
share what they are doing directly with our community.
It also provides an opportunity for our members to
communicate with each other and provide mentoring
and other assistance.
During 2020, OSCA Executive Director Scott
Montgomery and the OSCA executive are promoting
OSCAconnect to our branches, clubs and societies,
encouraging their members to use this platform
to communicate their events and news to OSCA’s
16,000-strong cohort. OSCAconnect registration is easy
– simply go to https://oscaconnect.com.au/, and start
using this vital communications tool.
Later in 2020 the new Archives Museum and OSCA
House project will be completed. As well as a
museum to enable our School’s history to be
displayed, and providing appropriate protection
for our valuable Archives items, for the first time
the OSCA community will have a real home.
There will be meeting rooms and work spaces
that all of our clubs, societies and individual
members can use. It is very exciting to have
a space that facilitates engagement between
members and connection to our shared history.
In 2019 we made a significant effort to help
build engagement with Young Old Boys, and
to focus on issues that are important to them.
During the year in a number of events this
group focused on mental health, particularly
associated with the transition from school to
university or into the workforce. We have also
made this issue a key focus for 2020, and
we are working with our Young Old Boys on ways of
maintaining the focus.
Good schools only stay strong while they are
connected to their communities. We have seen examples
recently where this link has broken down, and the results
have been unsatisfactory for all concerned. OSCA has
an important role to play in providing a conduit between
Old Boys and the School, including by listening to what
our members are telling us, and communicating those
views to the School. I will have more to say about this as
the year progresses, and in the meantime I encourage all
OSCA members to talk to us.
www.oscaconnect.com.au
Great Scot Issue 159 – May 2020