Deborah Griffin, Chair of Trustees Bursar of Homerton College, Cambridge
One of the highlights of the financial year 2019/20 was nothing directly to do with finance at all. It was the SOHK annual awards evening in which the achievements of participants from our schools and adult programmes across England, Scotland and Wales were recognised. It was a great reminder to everybody there just why everyone in the charity works so hard towards our mission ‘to empower people to fully realise their potential.’ Seeing lives completely turned around for the good is what makes the ‘hard yards’ (in rugby parlance) of fundraising and strong governance more than worth the effort.
After a challenging previous year, the all round effort throughout 2019/20 to ensure a sound financial platform from which to sustain and grow the work has been remarkable and I wish to thank all of the trustees, staff and many volunteers who work so industriously to this end. A special mention must go to the wonderful players who put themselves through the agony of 30 hours and 28 minutes of contact rugby to break the Guinness World record for the longest ever game of rugby union, but also, crucially, to raise funds and awareness. As I write, we are in the grip of a global pandemic and of course the sort of delivery that we want to offer has to be adapted. That said, we continue to work every week with over 750 children who need our support more than ever and the staff have harnessed all their creativity to provide an online version of our adult courses which is beginning to be commissioned by multiple stakeholders such as the DWP and the WRU. A bit like the world record match, we are in a long hard slog, but the mission is what drives us on. Thank you, as ever, for your support and encouragement.
Ken Cowen CEO
SOHK's Vision Statement: A society in which everyone has an equal opportunity to succeed.
What is more useful in a pandemic – a road map or a compass? I don’t mean that literally of course: For road map read ‘detailed plan’, for compass, read ‘a vision statement’. If the School of Hard Knocks team had started 2020 only with a highly detailed road map in place which told us every turning we must take on the way to our destination then by the end of March, we would have been truly scuppered because nothing – nothing could have prepared us for how this year is turning out.
Please don’t worry - you’ll be pleased to know that we do actually make plans for the short, medium and long term future, but it’s times like this that having a very clear vision as to what we are about and what sort of society we want to live in enables us to thrive in difficult times. The stated vision of School of Hard Knocks is to work towards ‘A society in which everyone has an equal opportunity to succeed.’ It is important for us as a team to hold that vision very much in mind so that it acts a kind of compass that keeps us going in the right direction when plans have been thrown out of the window. The frustration of course is that for all the great work that has been done over the past few years, this current crisis we are in means that we are witnessing greater inequality as opposed to seeing the gap narrow. It’s a knock back for sure, but we have no choice but to dust ourselves down and push on in the right direction…. we are School of Hard Knocks after all! I am so proud of the response of the SOHK team who harnessed every ounce of imagination, creativity, industry and shear passion, earlier this year to develop online versions of what we would ideally want to deliver in person. Some of our resources were disseminated far and wide so that people way beyond our normal reach were supported. If you believe in our mission and share our vision, then please think about supporting our work and stand with us. If you are one of the many people who have, in so many different ways, had our back this year, then all I can say is a massive thank you…. And please stick with us!