John Lyon's charity Annual Report 2024 - Report - Page 32
REFLECTING ON HOMESCHOOL-COMMUNITY
When in March 2020 the ominous looming of
a pandemic finally arrived with full force and
the UK entered its first lockdown, the team at
John Lyon’s Charity turned on a sixpence and
‘buckled up’, despite no destination being in sight.
Spinning from something that had seemed only
a short time ago to be unimaginable, we found
ourselves, like everyone else, doing something,
not nothing, and learning on the way.
What was never an option, was doing nothing and by that
I also mean ‘doing nothing different’. We all had an inkling
that things just wouldn’t be the same again and if we were
going to try to learn for the future, now was the time to get
going. In 2020, John Lyon’s Charity was, in its current guise,
thank goodness, getting on for 30 years old. Enough time
had elapsed for us to have honed our craft and to begin
to feel legitimately a stakeholder in our Beneficial Area of
North and West London, a Beneficial Area that cares very
deeply for the communities that make it such a diverse
and dynamic place to live and grow up.
What was gratifying across the voluntary sector was
just how many others buckled up and set off, seeking a
destination that at the very least might look familiar. For
so many children, young people and their families, the
existence of the sector had been vital before anyone had
even heard of Covid-19, and the Charity was in excellent
and reassuring company as so many organisations
worked tirelessly to support their communities and face
these new challenges head on with all the experience
and understanding they had ready in their arsenal.
To see the pandemic impede so much necessary and
amazing work was, of course, very distressing. As the
Charity’s initial response rolled out – being in touch with
beneficiaries, offering reassurance, guidance and funding
– it became more and more clear that a solid, strategic
response would be required, that could work through both
the immediate aftermath of the effects of the pandemic and
also provide crutches on the way to recovery, whatever
that was going to look like.
Cathryn Pender, Grants Director
30
JOHN LYON’S CHARITY ANNUAL REPORT 2024
