An Outside idea from Caroline Sinclair : There are more hours in the day

While listening to a podcast with Dr Catherine Green OBE, of the Oxford University team who developed and began manufacturing the AstraZeneca vaccine, she uttered the words ‘the past 18 months taught me that there ARE more hours in the day’.

Surprised? What she meant is that with the sole focus of working on the Coronavirus vaccine, and with the world crying out for help fighting the virus, her team had no option but to pull together to achieve the goal.

In a similar (but not quite as impressive) way, I helped to start a Food Bank charity in lockdown. If you had asked me two years ago if I could find time to start up and run a charity in my spare time alongside a full time job as a Fundraiser, I would have looked at you with horror, and yet with the perfect storm of furlough and an increasing need for families in my local area for access to affordable food, the Cheylesmore Food Hub was born and is now a registered charity with one part time employee, delivering food parcels to between 50-60 families a week.

What can we take from this? Perhaps a lesson around focus, and when you prioritise one goal above all others you can get it done, but also that we’re all a lot more resilient than we give ourselves credit for when we need to be!

Caroline Sinclair
Ronald McDonald House Charities