Sonja and James Holloway

As you can imagine, the last few months have been an incredibly challenging time for everyone and the social enterprise sector has been hit very hard by the Covid-19 crisis. Our team has been working incredibly hard to continue to provide virtual support to our Graduates and coffee industry workers who have been affected the worst. To paint a bit of a picture for you, we have helped baristas with mental health, retraining to make ventilators and more recently back in to coffee jobs upstream as the lockdown eases.

The #supportthe234 crowdfunder campaign was a good chance for us to use a platform to galvanise our community through challenges and fundraising. It will help us build a more robust Virtual Platform for the organisation which we will now work to implement not just for our 234 Graduates but new beneficiaries we hope to reach in autumn and beyond. It is a crucial project for us to come out of the crisis with a better, more effective model of training for the future and help people who face disadvantage out of unemployment.

I've been dedicated to the organisation www.wellgroundedjobs.co.uk for the last year and a half and have helped build it up through many hours of blood, sweat and tears, so this was a special moment to do something in the name of TOY for a cause I am passionate about.

For our TOY Cap Project this year, James ran the entire 234 bus route through north London and I did 8,910 Jumping Jacks (234 for every day of the campaign) to do something that mattered during the crisis. We were delighted to have the support of the TOY family to achieve it!