Set up in 2025 and already established and well-recognised in Camden’s charity sector, Holding Your Online Hands CIC have achieved so much and come so far in a very short space of time. Their story is a great example of identifying gaps and using resources to build their profile and utilise their skills. We asked them how they got started, how they achieved so much in 2025, and what their future plans are.
We are publishing the first half of this interview this week, to read the second part you’ll have to tune in to the next newsletter!
Could you speak about your respective backgrounds before working at HYOH?
“We help people with basic digital and telephone admin tasks they’re unable to complete, as well being able to directly help with accessing specific services and resources such as food & baby bank vouchers, energy grants and resolving utility bill challenges. We aim to compliment Camden Council’s existing support network, directly signposting to relevant partners for all other services and benefits.
Please see this section of our website: Services — Holding Your Online Hands
We’ve completed safeguarding training and are an approved Safe Haven in Camden meaning vulnerable people can be signposted to us. We also support the Camden Together initiative providing people feeling lonely places to visit and be social.
As part of our set-up, we offer mothers we’ve supported the opportunity to join us as volunteers – this could be anyone looking for work experience or wants to find additional purpose on top of caring for their family. Our working hours are child-friendly in between nursery and school hours.
In 2025, we ran 40+ weekly drop-in sessions and supported 50+ families on an on-going basis – a number we want to at least double in 2026″.
What are the main challenges you’ve faced since you’ve been operating? When we met, you mentioned how the small staff size of 2 meant that you were both very overworked. Has that improved at all?
There was of training to get done in order to become a Safe Haven partner for Camden. On Safe Haven training days we leveraged volunteers to keep our drop-in days going, and to test how we could scale through volunteer support.
Another challenge was needing a professional brand (not just a great website) and we had no idea how important social media was going to be for use and soon realized we needed to build a completely different professional and personal network. Instagram is essential for signposting people to our services and a brilliant way of finding new partners to collaborate with. Using Tonia’s corporate network on LinkedIn was a starting point, but using that to share our HYOH posts has resulted in a completely different community and charity-centric network. We are no longer invisible”.
What’s your relationship with Camden like? What do you love most about it as a borough, and what are some positives and negatives you’ve found with the local charity sector.
We wouldn’t be anywhere without the support of VAC and safeguarding & Safe Haven trainings. VAC helped us build the community networks we needed and sign-posted us to many important teams in the Camden council and community partner network.
We were fortunate to meet the Mayor of Camden at the end of 2025, his vocal support of our cause helped create more visibility and provide us with the credibility needed to continue expanding.
Funding was our greatest challenge in 2025, but have learned many lessons about what works for this size of organization, and what can be saved for future efforts. We are better equipped and smarter on how to be more strategic & efficient with funding moving forwards.
In early 2026 the venue that we were operating in closed, so have been forced to bring our service directly to where our families are based. We have sorted a temporary home in another venue, but are in active discussions with 2 centrally-located, community venues in Camden which we hope will become our forever homes. Both have great footfall and we will be able to support an increasing number of families in the borough.
What are the future goals for Holding Your Online Hands?
Grow the organization to offer even more types of resources & support to even more people, making a lasting impact on people’s lives.
Our weekly drop-ins are currently all self-funded through events and donations, however we are in the process of applying to over 100 grants and funds. Funding will provide capacity for providing more drop-ins, whilst enabling us to grow our team and therefore increase the number of people we can help. The additional funds and workforce will allow to us expand our existing weekly drop-in service as well as offering them in greater London. These expanded operations then create more child-friendly employment opportunities for mothers, alongside employment opportunities within our CIC. We will measure impact through number of free drop-ins provided, families being supported and community events delivered.
We are also actively developing new partnerships and financial models to support our business, including expanding our paid mentorship programme, and being signed up as a not for profit Cause on the Easyfundraising platform.
For Holding Your Online Hands CIC 2026 is a year for growth and scale. Given our purpose is to help families struggling with food insecurity, leveraging new unrestricted funding from Easyfundraising means we can redistribute a proportion of donations received by Holding Your Online Hands back to community members in most need which would have lasting and significant impact for them.
Anything else you’d like to highlight?
We are excited to have a new partnership with Tenants Advice, a charity tackling poor housing conditions and difficult private landlords. The Sticky-note Squad organization is great at supporting grass roots not-for-profits with fundraising and training. We are developing our relationships with the Community Café at 5 Pancras Square and St Pancras Community Association.
We are most proud of the 50+ families whose lives we continue to positively impact. Every person we have supported recommends us to others and continue to come back to us.
Their testimonials tell our story. They are presented in the video on the homepage of our website and the Testimonials tab – Holding Your Online Hands – along with ongoing testimonials shared on Instagram.
Highlights are as follows:
Bintu (Affiliate & Volunteer) – “they always make me feel I am not alone in this….I’ve seen a big change in my life which I am so happy about”.
Captain John Nixon (Ambassador) – “this is something that they are exceptionally efficient at….after 3 or 4 hours on 2 occasions, they solved all the problems, so I can’t thank them enough”.
Sara (Community Member) – « I came to Tonia & Kiri in early 2025 when I was very new to Belsize Park and my 5 year daughter hadn’t arrived from Iran. I was in desperate need of help with my food and energy costs that weren’t possible to cope with. I was feeling very low in life. We spent many hours together and week-by-week, step by step, eventually I started to cope and see a way forward. Thanks to them I am now in a happy place and definitely recommend them to anyone who is in the same position as I once was”.
Karen & Prem (Volunteers & Fundraising) – “What are we in need of? People that we can trust, networks that work – we all need to put these things first in our communities. The vulnerable who visit Holding Your Online Hands leave surprised and reassured. Having come across the terrain of double standards of neglect, of bureaucracy, which bypasses sincere concern. Here they navigate together with staff to receive practical resolve as aid. Holding Your Online Hands can be a template that all local authorities can learn from – real compassion in action”,
Jim (Community Member) – “Tonia and Kiri have helped me remain connected in an online world that overwhelms me and excluded me from life. Having struggled with speaking over many years they have been the voice I needed to access services I need. Through patience and perseverance, they work with me at my own pace. They support me every week with anything I struggle with, I am proud to call the my friends”.
Julie – “She’s (Tenants Advice) called me and have my appointment booked for next Monday. They are awesome”
Joy – “Thank you so much for your support….I have gotten my items, the washing machine was delivered on Saturday”
Anonymous – “Us – Hope getting you up and running on local Facebook communities played a part in some way?” – Reply “Yes, it certainly did…the next day I found a place. I’m so grateful”
We are looking forward to attending International Women’s Day breakfast and panel discussion with Social Pantry at Mansion House on March 10th. This will be a great opportunity to develop our network with peers from across the community and charity sector.
In closing, we have been nominated for an award from the SME News team for the 9th annual UK Enterprise Awards for changing lives through community support.
A big thank you to Tonia and Kiri for sharing their story with us!
