Wolds Magazine article: New Pocklington Rugby Club based charity stands up to coronavirus (COVID-19)

When the Pocklington Rugby in the Community (PRITC) charity was launched in December 2019, no one involved could have foreseen how quickly they would find themselves involved in the ongoing effort to support its local community.

With the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in early March, the charities trustees quickly revised their initial launch plans to ensure the charity supported the town and surrounding area’s response to this health crisis. 

And they’ve done so spectacularly.

The charity, independent of the rugby club, worked with the club to negotiate using the clubhouse building as the Pocklington Area Community Response Hub in partnership with East Riding of Yorkshire Council, the Smile Foundation, The People’s Pantry and the local COVID-19 Community Support group serving Pocklington and many of the surrounding villages from Hayton to Stamford Bridge.

Until this point, The People’s Pantry had been operating from the home of one of its volunteers. Now, with a dedicated space for storage and administration, the rugby club has become its new long-term home.

To date, the Pocklington Community Hub has delivered 1,500 food parcels, visited 500 people identified by the Council as vulnerable to check they were safe and well, collect and deliver over 160 preceiption each month, undertaking shopping for individuals, providing a buddying service and much more.

In one case, an elderly lady discharged from hospital arrived home that evening alone and with no food. The team immediately sprang into action to deliver an urgent food parcel.

In another case, a volunteer scratched the surface of a seemingly simple request for help and uncovered a much more serious cause for concern, resulting in a call for an emergency ambulance.

The R rate in our area may be comparatively low but, as these stories show, the impact of this virus on our doorstep is still painfully real for too many people. 

As well as supporting vulnerable people, the team has also secured support from businesses across Yorkshire to provide gestures of support to care workers and volunteers during the pandemic. 

This has included delivering over a thousand Vegilante Burgers to care workers and the Ambulance Service serving Pocklington, Holme on Spalding Moor, Market Weighton, Beverley, Goole and Driffield with buns from William Jackson Bakers and cucumber from Anchor Nurseries. 

The team also secured 2,500 meals from the Ivy Restaurant in Leeds as part of their initiative to donate one million meals across the UK and delivered them to local families and volunteers.

As well as securing these corporate donations, the charity has also supported the local economy, spending around £5,000 on services and products from local suppliers and trades, helping to keep those businesses going during what has been an unprecedented downturn in demand.

Despite the significantly greater than expected challenge and the substantially lower than expected finances, the list of things the charity has every right to be proud of is astonishingly long.

So, what’s in store for the longer term?

At some point the charity will look like to host an official launch, a plan that was curtailed when the country was placed into lockdown in late March.

For now, the charity, together with Pocklington Rugby Club, is already working to make the upstairs part of the clubhouse its permanent base as well as continuing to act as a Community Resource Centre to house other local charities too.

The Percy Road clubhouse will continue to provide a base for the People’s Pantry and the Trustees are hard at work applying for grants and raising vital funds to complete the refurbishment needed and to fund the regular lunches and games afternoons it had always planned to host for vulnerable groups once they’re safe to go ahead.

As well as anyone who would like to donate, fundraise or volunteer their time, the Trustees are particularly keen to hear from anyone in the area who has suggestions for more ways the charity can support the community.

This may be a very specific request for some individual support, or it could be from other local charities who could benefit from physical space for meetings, activities, or administration which the club may be able to provide.