A year ago today, People Know How left their offices to begin delivering their support online and over the phone. We took a look back at how we’ve adapted in the last year.
Continuing our support
Exactly one year ago our team of staff and VIPs left our offices at 525 Ferry Road to continue delivering our support in Edinburgh and East Lothian whilst working from home. We never could have guessed that a year later we’d be fully adapted to online and phone support, chatting on Teams with a staff team that has almost tripled in size, delivering new projects, collaborations and even a national campaign!
It’s truly been our busiest year yet, with a 60% increase in service users due to the pandemic. After adapting our services to continue support online and over the phone, we’ve got all new projects, staff members, service users and VIPs. If there’s one thing that hasn’t changed, it’s our passion for social innovation!
Children and young people
Our Positive Transitions service has continually provided support to children, young people and their families throughout this strange and difficult year. The service is now entirely online, and we have welcomed two Befriending Coordinators, two Youth Workers and a Referrals Coordinator to the team!
A bigger team means more opportunities for innovation! Our projects have developed ways to make support online fun and exciting, all within safe and supportive environments providing sanctuary to cope with the ups and downs of the pandemic. From a virtual art exhibition, to recording videos on Teams like this one, to the upcoming final performance from our online drama club, Splendiferous Sessions!
Wellbeing through digital
Over in our Reconnect service we’ve seen some big developments in how we support adults and families. With many vulnerable adults self-isolating, the need for projects addressing social isolation has grown tenfold. This led us to develop new projects and recruit new staff to coordinate them, with two Learn Digital Coordinators and a two Wellbeing Calls Coordinators joining our Computer Delivery Coordinator.
We have always believed in the inextricable link between social and digital isolation, and the pandemic has only reinforced that view. This is why we developed Computer Delivery, our COVID-emergency response project delivering refurbished devices to the community. We provide phone support after delivery, in addition to running the national helpline for the Scottish Government’s Connecting Scotland programme. Since Computer Delivery’s launch in April we have delivered over 1,300 devices and have now partnered with the Edinburgh Remakery to provide businesses with a free service through which they can dispose of their old IT equipment in an environmentally-friendly way.
Another new project developed during this time is Wellbeing Calls, which joined Learn Digital in providing a supportive environment to reduce social isolation. Through these projects, we aim to improve wellbeing through building digital skills and maintaining connections.
Spaces
We have also been working on collaborations through which we run our Spaces. One of these is the location for our offices, 525 Ferry Road, which we have continued to manage with Edinburgh Palette.
In February we announced the joint-purchase of a new space, our All Aboard canal boat. Part of our partnership with Polwarth Parish Church, the boat will launch in the summer, serving as a safe space to gather, socialise and improve wellbeing, and will also host our projects and provide work or volunteering experience. We can’t wait to see her in the water!
Looking ahead to August, we will be acquiring another space on London Road at the heart of North East Edinburgh. We will have offices and a community space on the ground floor of a new student-led residential development. By basing ourselves here, we will ensure that development in the North East remains loyal to its community, and we will be well placed to grow and run our services supporting that community.
Volunteers, interns and placement students
This year our community of volunteers, interns and placement students (also known as our VIPs) has grown! With a team of almost 200 VIPs providing support to our projects, our VIP Management team has also taken on a new recruit.
To say thank you to all our VIPs in 2020 we hosted People Know How’s Got Talent and were truly wowed by the level of talent we saw in all the video submissions!
Working on a national level
As well as our services delivering support locally, we have also been engaged in collaboration with all four sectors to share our learning even further with the aim of influencing policy and affecting social change on a national level.
This year we formed our Leadership Team, including our new Development Officer, who have been working with the Board of Trustees to refine our outcomes and strategy as we begin to take these bold steps to create real step change. This new national level of our work is reflected in our new and improved Social Innovation Model that now contains a second tier of action-research and campaigning and lobbying.
Just this month we have begun the route to action-research, advertising for a PhD studentship that will facilitate a participatory action-research project on positive transitions. The findings of the project will be used to create a model of practice for similar projects beyond the Lothians, aiming to improve pupil transitions into secondary school across the UK.
We’ve also started campaigning and lobbying, launching our nationwide campaign Connectivity Now last week. The campaign calls for accessible and affordable connectivity in homes across Scotland to facilitate an end to data poverty. Derived from the Connect Four: Digital Inclusion event we held in November, the campaign manifesto contains three actions that we believe will eradicate data poverty. We’re now inviting organisations, community groups and individuals from the third, public, business and academic sectors to pledge their support with the aim of lobbying the government to use our actions to achieve connectivity for all across Scotland.
“What we've managed to achieve as an organisation over the last year is truly remarkable, and it's all down to our VIPs, staff, trustees, partners, donors and funders. Our team has risen to every challenge and banded together to make all this happen and we couldn't be prouder. As we move forward with restrictions easing we plan to build on this solid foundation with further collaborations and play a leading role in driving positive social change.”
Thank you
We can’t believe how much we’ve achieved over the past year. It’s been a truly challenging time, with new and unforeseen obstacles around every corner, but our People Know How community has risen to each new challenge.
We’d like to say a huge thank you both our internal team of staff, VIPs and trustees, as well as all our partners, funders and donors who have supported and collaborated with us to achieve our goals!