Dearest friends,
Twenty-five years ago this year, I joined Quaker Social Action. Before that, I think my longest stint in any role was three years. Yet here I am, a quarter of a century later, still here.
What has kept me at QSA so long? A wise colleague once said to me that some people realise their ambitions by moving jobs a lot, and others do so in one place. This is where I find myself, as passionate about QSA today as I was back in 2000.
Longevity brings challenges – and QSA rises to meet them.
I was talking recently with another peer, who has also been in their job a long time. They reflected that when the inevitable challenges come along, everyone looks to you to pull a rabbit out of a hat. Let me tell you that there have been a few times in my tenure when my hand has been frantically searching around the hat for that rabbit.
A recent example of this is the pandemic. Everything was turned on its head. What services could we run and how? What on earth would happen to our income streams? Through a whole host of things, including the unswerving diligence of our staff and trustees and a groundswell of support from our supporters, we were able to step up to meet the challenges of the time.
We’ve innovated new ways to tackle poverty.
In the last twenty-five years, the range of QSA’s services has changed quite a bit. This is not about change for change’s sake, but more a recognition that the world evolves, it needs change and we must adapt too. I always say that the financial support we receive from our community powers this evolution – it enables us to take risks, try out new things, rethink our existing services or indeed start up new ones. On the flipside, as much as we value innovation, we also cherish longevity in our work, and donations sustain the projects we really want to keep.
Take, for example, Down to Earth, the only UK-wide service for people struggling with funeral costs. This took two years of research to come to fruition. I was able to dedicate time to drive that research forward, because as a charity we had a level of financial stability that meant we were not in firefighting mode all the time. That was thanks to your support.
When we launched Down to Earth in 2010, it started as a local service. We met people in person, we partnered with the local hospice, we continued to graft, learn, evolve. Now Down to Earth is an award-winning, unique UK-wide resource for anyone worried about the costs of funerals. It offers an impressive array of tools and information online, as well as a dedicated helpline. We grew it to this point, and that, in no small part, is due to your support too.
Moreover, we have used the knowledge we have gained at Down to Earth to emphatically speak truth to power. Our advocacy has contributed significantly to change across the whole funeral industry and to the state support offered to people struggling with funeral costs. My sincere thanks, to everyone whose donations made it possible for us to effect change for every single bereaved person in the UK.
We’ve taken the Quaker name out into the world.
The fact that we have Quaker in our name has always been something I have taken incredibly seriously. We have a huge responsibility to be positive ambassadors for Quakerism, even though our work is not religious and we welcome people of all faiths and none into our services and our workforce.
The memory of the work we do and the support we can give, sometimes lingers long in the minds of others. I recently heard about a former volunteer who, in a new role, supports people in a vulnerable situation to feel the benefit of human contact. They told me that it was hard to find a way into a dialogue with one particular person; then, as they gently chatted, the volunteer shared that they were a Quaker. The other person made an immediate connection to the work of QSA – we had supported him several years prior. They immediately established a rapport and a connection.
Our reach has grown far beyond east London.
When I joined QSA, all of our work was rooted in east London. Much of it still is, but we made a conscious decision that we would also expand our reach. This means we have worked in many other parts of London, such as several years of deep work in Camden, Islington and Haringey – and our work also now has a national remit. This is most evident with Down to Earth, which has a UK-wide telephone helpline. The pandemic shifted many of our services online for a while, and in the case of This Way Up, our wellbeing & resilience support service, online support continues to this day. This broadens access to the programme far beyond our east London heritage.
We’ve spoken truth to power.
We also added something new and distinctive to our mission: a commitment to share our learning where it can benefit communities beyond our own.
We have done this in multiple ways over the last couple of decades. We have trained thousands of people in our unique approach to financial literary via our Made of Money programme. We have invested time skilling up hundreds of professionals who offer money guidance within their own communities, in the Money Guiders England Network. We have sought to inform the general public with countless media appearances on the subject of funeral poverty.
And crucially, we speak truth to power. Our work with the funeral industry has led to phenomenal strides in terms of funeral price transparency. We have influenced government too, to improve the benefit system for those struggling with funeral costs.
We’ve also taken evidence from our Cook Up service to Whitehall, that showed the shockingly poor quality of food in Home Office managed accommodation. Cook Up is a kitchen for people who don’t have a kitchen, supporting people experiencing street homelessness or living in Home Office or temporary accommodation. At Cook Up, people can cook the meals they want to eat from scratch, using bespoke ingredients that we source just for them.
And we are engaged with the GLA on the desperately important subject of child poverty, through the 4in10 network that we host.
Yet we are still a relatively small-scale operation – most of our services are delivered by teams of two, sometimes three, part-time staff. One of the obligations of my role is to ensure we spend charitable income as efficiently and effectively as possible – I am emphatic that we are delivering on this point!
You make this job a joy to do.
In 2017 I was honoured to be given the award for Outstanding Individual Achievement at the national Charity Times awards, for my services to social justice work over several decades. I said at the time that the award was shared with all my colleagues and QSA trustees, and those who preceded us too. We stand on the shoulders of our supporters and our community, dating all the way back to when QSA was founded in 1867.
One of the real joys of my job has always been talking with you about our work, and hearing about what Quaker Social Action means to you. Many of you are supporting us with donations, and for that I am so grateful. We are accountable to you for the work we do in your name, and I hope that we will continue to live up to that responsibility for many years to come.
