Visitors from Oxford's Russian twin city of Perm have been getting a taste of the local community spirit.
Envoys from the city have arrived on a fact-finding mission to learn how community centres in Oxford are run.
They will be visiting community centres in Cutteslowe, Rose Hill, Barton and Blackbird Leys.
And Lord Mayor Susanna Pressel hosted a small reception for them at Town Hall on Tuesday. She said "We are proud of our community centres here in Oxford and it's good to see that people are coming from other countries to learn from us.
"There is little or no tradition of volunteering in Russia — it's very different from here — so they may need to try a different approach.
"We also spoke about the terrible air crash in Perm last week and expressed our condolences again."
Eighty-eight people were killed when a passenger jet travelling from Moscow to the Ural Mountains city crashed earlier this month.
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