Queen’s birthday honours local leaders who stepped up amid the pandemic
In light of the Queen’s birthday and the global crisis that has bound communities together, 23 per cent of the monarch’s honours list are those who emerged as local leaders in the fight against Covid-19.
Some local leaders reshaped their businesses to aid their communities while others put them on the back burner altogether.
“Throughout the pandemic we have seen countless examples of every day heroes,” prime minister Boris Johnson said.
“We should take heart from the stories of those receiving honours today and be inspired by their courage and kindness. May they be a reminder of all that we can achieve when we come together as a society.”
Rhys Mallows, who owns a whiskey distillery with his dad, has been awarded a British Empire Medal (BEM) for repurposing his bottling facility to produce hand sanitiser amid a national shortage.
When the pandemic first hit, panic buying gripped the UK and the rest of the world, leading to a trickling supply of hand sanitiser.
As the father and son duo could not find any hand sanitiser for their new distillery Mallows Bottling, they decided to make a radical pivot in their business which was only around three months old.
The 25-year-old said: “We saw the tightening in the hand sanitiser market and it really worried us.
“We went from making a small trial batch…to 1.3m bottles for our local community.”
The whiskey bottler underwent a hefty research and development (R&D) process to meet the pressing need of shallow hand sanitiser supplies.
“When we first started making hand sanitiser, we began to lose money, we had to have a huge R&D process.
“It was a huge investment for us to do it, but it was the right thing for us.”
Food4Heroes
Amanda Guest and John Brownhill, cofounders of charity Food4Heroes, have a similar story that led to their BEMs.
After a viral video showed how panic buying left shelves empty for one NHS nurse, the pair rallied local chefs to create dishes for NHS staff in their community.
Brownhill put his IT consultancy on the backburner to make sure the business model could be widened across the country.
“It’s probably the most rewarding thing I’ve ever done in my life,” Brownhill told City PM
“So, although it’s nice to earn as much money as you can, its actually far more rewarding to see individuals appreciate something that you’re doing.
“I was actually still having to do some of that work whilst I was doing Food4Heroes but obviously my activity on that side had to decrease significantly just to put the focus in on Food4Heroes.”
With the help of over 40 volunteers, the brother and sister duo supplied 230,000 meals across 43 hospitals and eight regions in the UK.
After the charity’s success, which raised just over £500k since last March, Guest and Brownhill are now eyeing expansion into what they call ‘community cafes’.
“We would like to continue working with food banks. One of our biggest challenges…it’s really difficult to get hold of chefs,” Brownhill said.
In a bid to tackle both food inequality and job insecurity, the pair are looking to train up those out of work as the job market and communities alike, slowly recover from 15 months of pandemic life.