Macclesfield Mum brings community together with gifts of kindness for keyworkers

With lockdown bringing communities together more than ever before, first time mum Charlotte Percy, a solicitor and Co-op Pioneer for the community, set about organising an initiative to honour the keyworkers in her local village of Gawsworth, Macclesfield.

Using the local neighbourhood app ‘Next Door’ Charlotte posted a message asking for nominations of key workers in the area:

 https://nextdoor.co.uk/post/17592193949448?init_source=copy_link_share

whilst seeking support from local businesses and neighbours to provide gifts. The idea was to create a circle of kindness and giving within the village.

For the last four weeks, Charlotte has posted a ‘Gawsworth Gift of Kindness’ message on the neighbourhood network providing details of the keyworker and the neighbour or local business responsible for the gift donation.

Through her work with the community, Charlotte has identified and highlighted a range of wonderful stories of sacrifice including; Emma Nichol, a Sister at Macclesfield General who hadn’t seen her two sons aged 9 and 5 for the entirety of the 7 weeks of lock down and wasn’t even able to give her son a cuddle on his birthday; Dawn Cox, a bed manager working 6 days a week 7am – 9pm at Manchester Royal Infirmary; nurses who had been redeployed to covid-19 wards, ambulance staff, midwives and hospital porters.

The heartfelt gifts donated by local Gawsworth businesses and neighbours included a month’s supply of eggs from Bernard’s farm in the village, a course of Yoga classes at the local scout hut (once classes are reinstated), a crate of locally brewed artisanal beer, a food hamper of milk, butter, cream and yoghurts from the Gawsworth dairy farmer Newtons, a luxury food hamper from Singleton Bespoke Joinery based in the village, and a selection of wine, fizz and chocolates from various neighbours.

Gaining traction very quickly with over 50 neighbours and businesses currently supporting their key worker neighbours, Charlotte expanded the initiative to include stories of the local heroes keeping the communities connected. These include; Postman Robin, a well-loved personality in the village who has continued to serve with a cheery smile in the face of the pandemic, the refuse collection team in Gawsworth who have been dealing with a 40% surge in organic and green waste, and the support staff at Gawsworth Primary School who had been into school every day including the caretaker, the cleaners, the school cook.

After spreading awareness of the initiative on her local Community Mama Instagram page https://www.instagram.com/communitymama/ and Facebook group https://www.facebook.com/groups/communitymama/ Charlotte has received numerous enquiries to set up similar initiatives across the country, the first of which has now been established in a village in Dorset, with Kate Slater spearheading the ‘keyworker gift of thanks’ for her community.

On the unexpected success of the initiative, Charlotte comments “I have always been passionate about community work and since moving to Gawsworth in 2017 have been very active with local initiatives. I wanted to ensure that I used lockdown to continue to build on the community by putting faces to the names of the amazing Key workers living amongst us making huge sacrifices. This has helped our village connect and pull together in solidarity more than we could ever imagine."