Liskeard’s Town Forum asked community groups to feedback on how the pandemic had affected them, how they were emerging from it – and what they hoped for the future.

The Forum had been set to meet this week, but following the new regulations on gatherings, this has been postponed, and the group hopes to begin virtual meetings instead.

Chairman David Ambler said: “The Liskeard Town Forum will continue to push the projects suggested by members, including the steps at Moorswater and the rundown buildings in the town.”

LISKEARD & LOOE FOODBANK – project manager David Berry

We are continuing to support those in our community who are struggling to put food on the table.

Since ‘lockdown’ we have seen an 80% increase in demand for food, with local people experiencing all sorts of crises including loss of job, debt, reduced income, children’s holiday meals, domestic violence, sickness, mental health, homelessness and much more.

By partnering with frontline agencies, we are able to see many of these helped out of their crisis and back on their feet.

We want to thank the whole community for their incredible support and generosity during this challenging time, with donations of food, finance and time to ‘help their neighbour’.

The next few months will prove to be even more challenging as the various government ‘safety nets’ are withdrawn and more people find they have no job to return to.

It’s really important we continue to work together to ensure no-one goes without in our community.

LISKEARD PLOUGHMANS Festival – chairman Pauline Hubner

Unfortunately we had to cancel both our Spring Market and our main summer festival. However, we went ahead with our Summer Market on August 15, a smaller, socially-distanced event, but one that brought positive vibes to the town.

Having had to cancel our 2019 festival due to terrible weather, this second cancellation has had a significant financial impact on us.

The vast majority of our funding comes from the support of local businesses.

In light of the impact that COVID-19 has had on small businesses, we anticipate that fundraising will be even harder than usual for our 2021 event. We are acutely aware of the financial pressures that the pandemic has placed on our community.

We will be looking into whether we might be able to get support from the Town Council, Forum or other grant-giving bodies, as well as whether it might be possible to hold additional fundraising events or campaigns.  

Liskeard, we simply have to ‘plough’ on!

LIGHTHOUSE COMMUNITY CENTRE – CEO Clare Bevan

The coronavirus outbreak has had a huge impact on us here at the Lighthouse Community Centre.  

At the start of the pandemic we had to cease all of our usual activities – but we have been busier than ever stepping up to help where we have seen a need.  

Over the last six months we have provided emotional support alongside food, hygiene and craft parcels to hundreds of people, enabling us to really be there for some of the most vulnerable people during what has been very difficult and uncertain times. We’ve grown, expanded and have some great new ideas for the future that will benefit the people of Liskeard and the surrounding areas.

We’ve definitely brightened up people’s days, on one occasion one of our delivery drivers left the passenger behind and he had to run up the road after the vehicle, leaving the customer laughing about it for the rest of the day!

RIO (Real Ideas Organisation) – CEO Lindsay Hall

For us at Real Ideas, the big impact of lockdown was shutting our space at No 26 Fore Street and stopping face-to-face support for young, unemployed people in Liskeard and beyond.

We’re really pleased to say that we managed to move that support online and have been successfully supporting 30 young people in Liskeard. 12 of those young people have successfully gone into work/training or education in a variety of areas including NHS, Care, data analysis, marketing, retail and university progressions.

These 30 young people are amongst around 400 other young people, across Cornwall, who we have continued to support remotely throughout the pandemic.

We have worked with the Scrapstore, Arts Council England and Together for Families to provide pens, paper and other creative materials for approximately 500 disadvantaged families in Cornwall.

We will continue to support young, unemployed people, especially as the need is increasing rapidly.

This support will primarily be online and virtual, although as restrictions ease, some face-to-face work has restarted.

We are adding additional services to our online offer, including working with employers to help them offer virtual work experience opportunities and work tours.

This is essential now that very few employers can offer physical work experience.

It is encouraging to see young people finding work, often online, despite all the challenges they face.