Ratio Talks

In an earlier episode we talked to Mick Ashton a worker at Transforming Choice, a new approach for people addicted to alcohol. Mick explained the ‘show must go on’ attitude at Transforming Choice. A few months on, the programme has completed. Graduation is typically a moment when everyone celebrates the hard work with their loves ones. This time, as Jay Keenan explains, it was different.

https://transformingchoice.co.uk

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Darren was released from Dartmoor only to be imprisoned by the lockdown. He describes his ways of coping, the ways in which his participating with Prison Choir Project in Dartmoor has motivated him to remain involved with the arts, albeit online, and on the value of mental health support via Zoom.

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During the first lockdown there was a surge in volunteering and community activism, most obvious in the work of ‘mutual aid’ groups. As the Bennett Institute for Public Policy observed, mutual aid is a manifestation of social capital in the community, which means it is strong in some areas but not in others. There is strong social capital in Finsbury Park, North London. Terry Conway launched herself into a mutual aid group in the ward and found that the response deepened connection with community, even for long-standing residents.

https://www.bennettinstitute.cam.ac.uk/blog/social-capital-and-response-covid-19/

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Andy Fearon leads Vineyard Church in Carlisle, and with Miriam Lowe has created Give a Day, an opportunity for citizens to give something to their community once a year. Nobody could come to church during the first lockdown, so the church started to come to the people. Give a Day became give every day. The pandemic, for Andy, is testament to our ability to adapt.

http://giveadaytothecity.org

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Thread builds a family of volunteers around high school students struggling to stay the course. Nikhil Gupta speaks to us from Baltimore about how Thread and the young people are adapting to the crisis.

Read more about Thread in David Brooks’ The Second Mountain, and at: www.thread.org

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Self-reliant groups are collectives of women -there are some men but it is mostly women- coming together to save, make loans to each other and support enterprise. It is hard to keep count, but there are around 10 million of these groups worldwide. In this episode, Karen from Johnstone in Scotland and Indira from Rotterdam meet each other online for the first time, and discuss their respective groups and how they have adapted to life after lockdown.

http://www.wevolution.org.uk

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When Ratio looked for places around the world that exemplified best relational practice, the name Roca Inc. kept coming up.  They have worked with the highest risk young people in communities across Massachusetts since 1988. They are relentless. They never give up. But whereas the pandemic created opportunities for some organisations, for Roca and the several hundred young people they support it erected a series of obstacles.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWIej2tOWpI

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Sue Shelley has helped Ratio understand the role of a relational worker, someone who makes a difference mainly through their connection to the people they help. Sue works with the most disadvantaged young people in Liverpool, several of whom have also been subjects of Ratio’s research. Here we find Sue relatively unfazed by the restrictions imposed by the pandemic, and finding new ways to keep her young people stay engaged and focused.

https://cominofoundation.org.uk/pdf/Windsor_Consultation_2012.pdf

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Karen Wint leads the Women’s Health and Family Services in East London. They match pregnant women with ‘maternity mates’, women who have children and live in the same community. Most of the women are on the margins of mainstream society, many are refugees. Karen describes the rapid and radical shifts in practice induced by the pandemic, and the associated opportunities and challenges.

http://whfs.org.uk/index.php/what-we-do/maternity-mates

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Thanks to the ingenuity of On Our Radar, we are able to listen to a conversation between residents in what are nowadays called informal settlements and in the old days would be called shanty towns cobbled together on the edges of the world major cities. Med is in Freetown, Josh in Nairobi. They reflect here on what the pandemic means in their worlds.

https://onourradar.org

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thisisratio.substack.com