Charities and Volunteering

Sarah Fecunda, who's a Co-op Member Pioneer, has been in touch asking how her organisation could help the local community during the Coronavirus episode.

North London Hospice has this week launched two urgent appeals asking the local community for help to maintain its end of life care services as the coronavirus pandemic deepens. It desperately needs the public to help meet an enormous shortfall in fundraising caused by the Covid-19 crisis, and it also is urgently seeking supplies of masks, aprons and gloves to protect its nurses and patients.

A message from Age UK Enfield: URGENT! We need to raise funds to help vulnerable older people who are isolated due to Coronavirus. We are working hard to provide information and advice, cooked meals and emergency food packages, and caring for people in their homes - Please Donate!

Benjamin Cuthbertson has been training for the Manchester and Boston Marathons since November - but they've both been cancelled. So instead he intends to run the first Palmers Green Marathon this Sunday, raising money for the Trussell Trust and its foodbanks. If you live on the route, you can watch him go by - 26 times!

Like many charities, Haven House children's hospice raises money through its events programme and its charity shops, but all events are now cancelled for the foreseeable future and all shops are closed. It expects a loss of income of £500,000 in the next three months alone, and has launched an emergency appeal for donations. In order to continue to support vulnerable children and their families, Haven House has launched an urgent appeal.

NHS Volunteer Responders has been set up to support the NHS during the COVID-19 outbreak. To do this we need an 'army' of volunteers who can support the 1.5m people in England who are at most risk from the virus to stay well. Our doctors, nurses and other professionals will be able to refer people in to NHS Volunteer Responders and be confident that they have been matched with a reliable, named volunteer.

Barnet-based Noah's Ark Children's Hospice is urgently appealing for financial help. The coronavirus, while making the charity's young patients even more vulnerable, is undermining its fundraising methods. It faces a £2 million deficit, which threatens its future.

The Helen Rollason Cancer Charity, which supports patients at the North Middlesex Hospital, has issued an urgent appeal for funding. The Covid-19 crisis threatens its charity shops, community fundraising efforts and its own fundraising events.

The London Borough of Enfield Covid-19 Mutual Aid group on Facebook is one of around 150 Covid-19 Mutual Aid groups that had been created around the UK as of Sunday lunchtime. Volunteers are coordinating via WhatsApp and Facebook groups and offering people in self-isolation help with shopping, dog walking and picking up prescriptions.

Maggie's at the Royal Free is asking people to help support its work by holding a Kitchen Table Day on Friday 27 March or a day that suits you.