Steve Chalke
Stephen John Chalke is a British Baptist minister, the founder of the Oasis Charitable Trust, a former United Nations' Special Adviser on Human Trafficking, and a social activist.
Chalke is the author of a large number of books and articles as well as a former presenter and now regular contributor and commentator on television, radio and other media.
Early life and career
Chalke was born in Croydon, South London, in 1955. As a teenager he became a Christian and decided to dedicate his life working to end poverty. He graduated from Spurgeon's College in South Norwood, was ordained a Baptist minister in 1981, and served as a local minister for four years. In 1985 he founded the Oasis Trust to set up housing, healthcare and educational projects.Oasis has since developed into a group of charities that currently operate in nine countries across Europe, Asia, and Africa, providing housing, education, healthcare, training, youth work, and family support. It has grown into a significant voluntary sector provider, delivering services for local authorities and national governments as well as self-funded initiatives. In the UK, Oasis' family of charities now includes Oasis Community Learning, Oasis Community Housing, Oasis Community Partnerships and Stop the Traffik as well as a growing network of Oasis churches. In the United Kingdom alone, Oasis now employs over 5,000 staff as well as working with thousands more volunteers.
Church leader
Chalke was ordained as a Baptist minister in 1981, after studying at Spurgeon's College in London. He was minister of Tonbridge Baptist Church in Kent for four years before setting up the Oasis Trust. He later formed a developing network of community churches around the UK which began with the foundation of Oasis Church Waterloo, London SE1, in 2003 and now includes churches in Salford, Bath, Hull and Reading as well as a growing number of other locations. Chalke served as founding minister of Oasis Church Waterloo from 2003 to 2023, in the London Borough of Lambeth where Oasis currently also serves its local community through the delivery of a children's centre, a primary school, a secondary school, various adult education opportunities, a foodbank, a drop-in debt advice centre, a community farm, the local public library, a range of youth work schemes and a breadth of other community building programmes.Housing
In the late 1980s Chalke set up Oasis' first housing project, developed to accommodate homeless young people living in South London and to support them on their journey to independent housing. In the late 1990s Chalke began working with a group of churches in his home town of Croydon, as well as in partnership with Croydon Council to establish the Croydon Foyer. The foyer, which opened in 2000, was accredited through the Foyer Federation, provided housing and training for homeless people aged 18 to 25.Although the Croydon Foyer has now closed, the provision of housing for vulnerable people has continued to be a priority for Chalke and Oasis. As a result, in April 2014 Oasis Housing formally merged with another homelessness charity known as Aquila Way to become what is now known as Oasis Community Housing, one of the Oasis UK subsidiary charities. It now supports around 1,200 vulnerable young people into housing each year as well as providing a range of other services.
Educator
From its early days Oasis has been involved in the provision of education not only in the UK but also in Asia and Africa.In the UK early in the 1990s, Oasis also began to develop professional training for youth workers. By 2009, this had grown into a range of academically and professionally validated short courses, undergraduate and postgraduate programmes of study in children's work, youth work and family practice and the Oasis College for Higher Education was established in central London.
In 2004 Chalke set up Oasis Community Learning as part of the Oasis Group of charities in order to deliver secondary education through the UK Government's Academies programme. The first three Oasis academies, at Enfield Lock, Grimsby and Immingham, opened in September 2007. Oasis’ involvement with secondary education has since grown and, from 2011, it also began to develop a focus on primary education. Today Oasis is responsible for 54 primary, secondary or all-through academies across England.
Through its educational arm Oasis aims to serve its academy students as well as to provide a centre of lifelong learning for the entire community, including; adult learning courses, community workers, healthy living programmes, sports courts and out-of-hours children's, youth and adult activities.
In 2022 Oasis was appointed by the UK government – together with the Harris Federation, Star Academies and Outwood Grange Academies Trust – to develop the National Institute of Teaching. According to the Department for Education “The National Institute of Teaching was founded by four leading school trusts, with a long and established record in helping teachers and leaders carve out the career that is right for them and working with children in local communities.” Its task is to boost the quality of teaching and school leadership by carrying out research, applying the insights to its professional development programmes, and sharing findings with the whole education sector.
Interview at Oasis Academy Limeside
During the "Mr Motivator: Body and Soul" event at on 20 May 2022, Chalke was interviewed by a student, which was published on the academy’s website. In response to a question from student interviewer Haoxuan He and Kathy Maskell about why he founded Oasis Community Learning, Chalke explained that his motivation was shaped by his own experience of attending a school he felt did not provide a strong education. He stated that this led him to want other children to experience higher-quality education and have access to brighter future opportunities.Health care
In September 1993, an earthquake devastated the Latur district in Maharashtra, India. Chalke, who was working as a presenter for GMTV, suggested to Peter McHugh, the Director of Programmes, that the station should run an appeal to build a hospital as a response to the crisis.McHugh agreed, and commissioned Chalke to travel to India to make a series of inserts to be played into a week's special programming to raise the funds to build the hospital. Over £1m was donated: in 1996, the GM Priya Hospital, built by Oasis, opened in Dapegaon, one of the villages affected by the earthquake. It was named after the TV station and a young girl, Priya, who survived the earthquake. Priya had been buried for five days underneath rubble but was protected by her iron cot.
Chalke, who was only just beginning the work of Oasis in India, suggested that the completed hospital be given to the Emmanuel Hospital Association. The Association was already running a series of hospitals in the north of the country and Chalke believed it had the capacity and infrastructure to sustain the work that Oasis and GMTV had begun. The GM Priya hospital has subsequently grown and now specialises in AIDS and Cancer Care as well as neurological diseases and chronic illnesses.
Although Oasis has not built another hospital, it is now engaged in a variety of health care initiatives both in the UK and beyond.
In 2010 Oasis Youth Support, a youth violence intervention service, embedded into St Thomas’ Emergency Department, was set up under Chalke's leadership in partnership with senior hospital staff. OYS addresses the underlying issues surrounding the presentation of young people at the ED with violence-related injuries. It is designed to address psychosocial and environmental factors associated with the young people's attendance due to violence. The service provides a unique opportunity to engage vulnerable young people at a critical moment for change, often those who would not otherwise come to the attention of statutory services. It serves two London boroughs – Lambeth and Southwark – which have high levels of deprivation. It aims to reduce the number of young people returning to the Emergency Department as a result of violence, and to increase the ED's contribution towards a public health approach to violence in these areas.
In recent years Chalke's involvement in grassroots healthcare has naturally grown out of the wider work of community development Oasis is now doing in local communities around the UK and beyond. Following the 70th anniversary of the NHS in July 2018 he was asked to deliver a speech to senior NHS staff on the way forward in the development of community health and wellbeing, where he stated his view that, "Our problem is that we have medicalised health care, focusing our thinking, energy and funding too narrowly. What we call the National Health Service would be better labelled a National Sickness Service. It’s time to think differently and invest in the other pillars on which real health and wellbeing are built. Health is 3D – it is about body, mind and spirit. The NHS cannot solve the health problems of the UK alone. It is time to think more radically." Oasis has subsequently launched Oasis Community Health as a new element of its work in partnership with Guy's and St.Thomas’ Charitable Trust and Frimley Park NHS Trust.