Welcome to our blog, where we hope to spread a little kindness and happiness in our communities and in the world.

Here we want to share stories about the small yet important ways people are taking steps to help each other, giving something back, enriching their own lives and those of the people they support. Twice a month we’ll post ideas, opportunities for volunteering, participating and giving; as well as engaging, learning and moving forward ourselves.

Why Staircase 9 17? Simply because when we were at Pembroke College, Oxford, where we first became friends, one of us lived on Staircase 9 and the other on Staircase 17. And our posts are in letter form in recollection of all the times we wrote to each other while we were students.

Here’s the link to our current post, In the summertime.

If you want to start as we did, with A beginning, just click here.

You’ll find links to our other recent posts below.

We hope you enjoy reading them, and maybe even trying out one or two of the ideas.

Claire & Sam