charity spotlight Archives - Voluntary Action Camden

Charity Spotlight – Holding Your Online Hands!

by Duncan Cordy17 April 202617 April 2026

Holding Your Online Hands! VAC first met with HOYH in Autumn last year.

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?

“Kiri grew up locally and her family ran a successful nursery and cafe in Belsize Park. She is a proud mum and now co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of HOYH.

Kiri from HOYH, smiling for a photograph

“Tonia was born in post-WW2 working class family in Birmingham, the youngest of 10 siblings. She excelled academically and went on to have a successful career in the corporate world in Information Technology. She is the other co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of HOYH.

Tonia from HOYH, smiling for a photograph

What are the main reasons you set up the charity?

“In 2024, Tonia chose to exit the corporate world of IT after 38 years. Incidentally, Kiri’s father asked me if I could mentor someone and help find a new career pathway. That person was Kiri. We had known of each other for many years, but from there began a new journey. After spending 90 hours together over a 9 month period, it became clear we were united over a common purpose of giving back and helping others. We decided that rather than just giving our time to other charities, we would set up our own initiative; Holding Your Online Hands.

Holding Your Online Hands CIC exists to support isolated people in a world where most services are over-the-phone or online-only. Many people have language or competency issues that make it extremely difficult to resolve their problems or get the help they deserve. This could be people of which English is not their first language, elderly people that aren’t digitally literate, families with no access to laptops and many other barriers”.

Kiri and Tonia sitting at a table with another woman, with drinks and artwork on the table.

Your support for the community is broad and wide-ranging, could you give some examples the kind of assistance you are able to offer people?

“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?

“2025 was a self-funded pilot year for us. We wanted to ensure we weren’t doubling-up on services other organization’s were already providing and find our own way to make an impact.

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 10^th. 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 9^th annual UK Enterprise Awards for changing lives through community support.

A big thank you to Tonia and Kiri for sharing their story with us!

Charity spotlight 07/02/2024 – Crescent Kids

by Duncan Cordy7 February 202518 November 2025

Crescent Kids started when Funmi Vanessa Ulam’s baby, just two weeks old, was diagnosed with Sickle Cell Disease. This serious blood disorder impacts people in different ways. In severe cases, it can be fatal. Funmi admits she didn’t know much about the condition until her family faced it, at which point she was thrown in at the deep end. While her son was in hospital for Sickle Cell crises, she met with medical teams and consultants. These crises are painful and can cause serious complications. She found out through her research and talks at the hospital that Sickle Cell is one of the fastest-growing genetic conditions worldwide, it has fewer resources and funds for research than other conditions. Health equity issues make this worse. Most people with Sickle Cell are black & brown-skinned.

Finding treatments, communities and vital resources for families is often challenging. Most details aren’t gathered in one place. With a better understanding of the condition and the lack of resources for families, Funmi set up Crescent Kids.

It wasn’t until the Covid pandemic however, that the organisation really got off the ground. Funmi registered with the Charity Commission. But, starting a charity alone and without funding can be a long, lonely journey, especially when looking after a child with complex medical needs. Funmi says she didn’t know where to start. The pandemic changed everything, though. Funmi vividly recalled her time in and out of hospital with her son, and this made her think of parents now facing tough decisions about taking their children to the hospital. To add to this, Funmi’s regular hospital was closed, so, they had to visit a new place. The staff there were unfamiliar and didn’t know hers son’s clinical history. Caring for a child with Sickle Cell became much more difficult.

Crescent Kids used fundraisers and social media to help spread awareness about Sickle Cell disease. They created care and wellness packs, offered online education on wellness, mindset, and pain management, and set up a support network.

Since then, the charity has grown from strength to strength. They have followers and team members across the world; Funmi met one of her team members on LinkedIn – Molille, who lives in Lagos, Nigeria. The charity is a great help for anyone with Sickle Cell disease or those caring for them. One of their latest projects is the Eli Health App – the first app aimed at children and carers, not just healthcare professionals. The app helps users by making things easier. It includes features like daily logs to track symptoms and comfort levels. Users get reminders to stay healthy and hydrated, which is crucial for those with Sickle Cell. Plus, it allows reporting that gives feedback to doctors and clinicians. The App has been chosen for the NHS Clinical Entrepreneur programme, which is the largest NHS initiative for innovators. The programme helps NHS employees and service users create effective health solutions.

Crescent Kids is also co-leading a new research project with UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health and NIHR. This project, called CARES Research, focuses on every child in England with Sickle Cell, and will explore their health and education outcomes. The aim is to understand how the disease impacts children’s quality of life.

The study will hold focus groups on:

22nd February in London

28th February in Manchester

8th March in Birmingham

Families with children who have Sickle Cell are encouraged to join and share their stories. The London focus group will take place at Crescent Kids office on Camden High Street.

To register interest, email your name and preferred location (London, Manchester, or Birmingham) to ichppp.cares@ucl.ac.uk.

Both projects are expected to provide a wealth of data for healthcare systems. This will help improve visibility and care for those with Sickle Cell disease. Funmi is determined for other parents not to have the experience she did of feeling isolated while looking after a sick child.

If you know someone who has Sickle Cell, check out the Crescent Kids website:

Crescent Kids – Happy Kids | Happy Lives