Words by Simon Wilson, Chief Executive Officer – The Pioneer Group & Compass Support
It’s hard to believe that it has been five years since the Covid pandemic started and cast a dark shadow over so many lives.
As a housing association our world stopped and changed forever as the pandemic struck. As a business we had to adapt to working and providing services remotely for the first time and of course as events unfolded stepped up alongside the whole community on Castle Vale to help those in need.
We helped coordinate a Covid Taskforce alongside the likes of Spitfire Services, church groups, the schools and local organisations all of which coordinated a huge range of provision from medication and food deliveries to welfare calls.
Much of the effort relied on volunteers and goodwill. Many colleagues couldn’t work from home and carried on with vital services in the community.
In many ways it showed something about Castle Vale I have always known. When times are tough and the community faces a challenge it will respond, it will come together and it won’t be done to, it will stand up for itself.
It’s easy to forget with the passage of time just how scary those days where and sadly too many families they would lose loved ones – they will never forget and nor should we.
If you follow the news this can also be seen as quite a scary time with global political and economic uncertainty and closer to home we remain conscious of the real world impact of cost of living crisis and fragile state of many public services.
It feels timely and important to reflect on what we can achieve as a community alongside remembering those we lost.
For more on The Pioneer Group visit www.pioneergroup.org.uk and for more on Compass Support visit www.compass-support.org.uk
The Pioneer Group and Compass Support are key partners in the Erdington Local COMMUNITY ANCHORS programme – supporting independent local and community journalism.
