Trying to change the world from my spare room
Pre-COVID
Before the pandemic, my job would require me to spend a large proportion of time on trains.
I didn’t love it.
To get to London by 9AM, I would have to wake up in the early hours of the morning. My straightened hair would turn frizzy whilst waiting on a damp platform. There was always someone sat in my reserved seat. (I hate being that person who asks you to move, but at the same time, I am that person)…That’s if the train isn’t cancelled or delayed. I even once lost a shoe as I jumped onto a Northern line train. In honesty it was a bad jump, my shin hit the step and my shoe fell off my foot down onto the tracks. I then had to walk around London without a shoe.
But in the same breath, I miss it. I don’t miss the actual train journeys, but I miss doing my job on the road. (And I miss my shoe, it was comfy).
Post-COVID
Since the stay at home order of March 2020, I have been working from the confines on my small home in Bradford. My new office has become a 2m² box room, and my desk a fold-up plastic table borrowed from my mum. I now wake up at a normal hour, my commute is all of three steps from bedroom to office and I conduct most of my meetings in a dressing gown. It’s a glamorous lifestyle.
Doing internal-External Affairs
(There’s a paradox if you ever did see one).
I work as a Relationship Manager in the External Affairs team at Christians Against Poverty (CAP). Our work spans across the financial services sector, as well as with government and regulators to see a fairer society. We represent CAP clients, who have an average household income of £12,579 (after housing costs) and who, on average, have £15,975 of debt.
I got into this role because I have an unquenchable passion to see social justice served. I want to see a society where people in poverty are supported, helped and loved. To eradicate UK poverty and break cycles of oppression and brokenness.
Big dreams for a small person. Luckily I’m not alone.
External Affairs work involves a lot of networking, presenting and shoulder-rubbing. In current terms, that translates into unsolicited LinkedIn adds, sharing screens and private messages on Zoom. Whilst this line of work has adapted well to the circumstances, trying to change the world from your spare room isn’t easy.
You’ve got the challenges of online networking, something much harder than just bumping into someone over a coffee at a conference. LinkedIn and Twitter are now some of the only avenues for sharing ideas, what had previously been side conversations at meetings or catch ups on the tube back home.
Times a changing
Luckily, all my contacts are in the same boat and the show must go on.
(First a paradox, now an idiom — can you tell I studied English?)
Now, more than ever, we need to see change towards a fairer society. COVID-19 has pushed many low income households into deeper levels of poverty. Systemic issues present before the pandemic have been brought further into society’s consciousness. We cannot ignore it any longer.
So even as I sit here in my spare room, there is an opportunity.
I don’t need to leave my house to be able to represent a marginalised household in Blackpool in a meeting hosted by government officials in Westminster. Even on a plastic garden table, I can write a report that highlights the level of poverty and deprivation we see across the UK. I can still present CAP’s latest findings on the impact of COVID-19 on clients to a group of people sat in their own homes across the length and breadth of the country.
I can still do my best to change the world from my spare room.
Onwards, upwards and outwards
I expect that COVID-19 has changed the External Affairs working environment for good. We’ve proven that we can do our job without having to buy a rail ticket, leave our house, or even get out of our activewear (just me?).
And even though most of us are actually missing conference sandwiches, and I will inevitably leap at the opportunity to attend an in-person meeting come summer — I’m anticipating that the ‘new normal’ will include far less travel, but similar levels of effectiveness. And in my mind, that’s a win win.
See… some good things can come out of a global pandemic.
