Peterborough Council for Voluntary Services – PCVS hosted a Future Forum last week, an online event where members from the sector shared heartfelt stories of how they pulled together to help people in need across local communities over lockdown.

There were 67 groups supporting 10s of 1000s of residents, who came together to talk about the challenges they faced and their achievements in supporting people over the past 6 months. This help ranged from setting up local food banks for families to access food, mental health support to address depression, loneliness and bereavement, volunteer handymen services and even issuing tablets to young people who could not access the internet.

PCVS realised a desperate need for support amongst the local communities during lockdown and set up various online forums to facilitate this for the key areas required, mainly Food Partnership, Debt & Poverty, Domestic Violence, Digital Inclusion, Volunteering and Youth forums.

Sarah Woodbine, Communities Forums and Training Coordinator who manages the Domestic Violence and Digital Inclusion forums said,During these difficult times, the sector has undergone many ups and downs and organisations have pulled together in response to this, working in new and unique ways to provide support to each other over the past few months. We want to harness these relationships and encourage working collaboratively going forwards. The forums have allowed people to engage and really support one another, they have have found this network invaluable”

PCVS will continue to run these forums in the future and welcomes anyone in need of support to join, for more information please contact pcvs@pcvs.co.uk. Going forwards the voluntary sector is looking forward to working more closely with statutory organisations to bring even more creative solutions to the challenges the City faces in these uncertain times.

23rd September 2020
crossmenuchevron-down linkedin facebook pinterest youtube rss twitter instagram facebook-blank rss-blank linkedin-blank pinterest youtube twitter instagram