A mother-of-two who supports vulnerable people in Nottinghamshire six days a week has sold her car and jewelry to help others during lockdown.
Throughout the pandemic Mo Fayose has been helping at least 70 vulnerable people every week. With demand for her support increasing, she’s now struggling to foot the bill.
Mo, from Basford, is currently spending between £250 and £300 a week out of her own pocket. She’s already sold her car and other belongings to bring in more money, but it’s not enough.
She said: “I know that if I don’t get donations, I will have to reduce the amount of people I support.
“It will break my heart… I don’t want to think that it could happen.”
Mo, 46, first set up Nottingham’s Community Cares Hub in 2016 to bring isolated people together on Christmas Day. After that, she ‘couldn’t stop’ volunteering.
Now, she cooks and delivers meals for isolated people twice a week, takes people to doctors appointments and is writing 5,000 letters of support to the vulnerable. Many of the people she helps are older and struggling with loneliness or mobility.
She even spent Christmas Day preparing 350 ‘drive-thru’ dinners for lonely people and frontline healthcare workers.
The main group she supports are people aged over 65, but she’s seen COVID impact the whole community.
She said: “Many people we support, during lockdown they were wandering around. The shops they go to just to sit down and look around are closed, the parks they go to are closed.
“Before, it was a case of the elderly. Now I found younger people, schoolchildren, depressed.”
Despite the financial struggles, she doesn’t want to reduce or stop her community work.
“Many of them are like my family now, I can’t just walk away.”
