Members of all East Oxford's diverse communities are being called on to share their hopes for the future of the area.

A two-hour meeting, which will be held at Oxford Community School, Glanville Road, on Sunday, from 3pm to 5pm has been organised by the city's Anglo-Asian Association in a bit to get people from all different ethnic and social backgrounds together. Anglo-Asian Association co-chair Dr Martin Conway said: "We want to get different people, some Anglo and some Asian, saying what their hopes are for East Oxford.

"Then we want to encourage people at the meeting to share their hopes too. East Oxford has a very significant community from both Pakistan and Bangladesh and other parts of the world, alongside a very variegated Anglo community - with lots of students, professionals and younger people.

He said: "It is a very mixed population and difficult to get hold of - and we are aware that we tend to live in separate worlds."

"It's very easy to live a life in East Oxford where you are aware there are all these other people around but you never actually meet them or talk to them."

Speakers at the meeting will include restaurateur Aziz-Ur Rahman, Benedict Lewin Leigh, chief executive of mental health charity Restore, Amanda Webb-Johnson, director of Refugee Resource, Fozia Tenvir, headmistress of the Muslim Iqra School in Littlemore, and youth worker Sadiq Abbasi.

Those at the meeting will discuss issues in small groups, before reporting back on priorities and what people are willing to do to offer to help. Dr Conway said: "It should be a very practical meeting and we hope we can discover people who would be prepared to positively start working on some of these hopes. Hopefully we will find ourselves with two or three projects, some small working groups and a steering group to get things going."

Co-chair Saj Malikr said the meeting was an exciting opportunity. He said: "We have a good relationship between the Anglo community and the Asian community but there is always room for improvements.

"We want to reach the people who we have not reached in the past and reach as many people as possible."