ANNEKA RICE: ‘Britain is extra divided than ever however The Big Help Out brings hope’
AA Milne put it beautifully –“Piglet was so excited at the idea of being Useful that he forgot to be frightened any more.”
I’m writing my memoir and I realise there’s a strong theme – that the family you’re born into is only a starting point. As you go through life you join communities that enrich and hold you up – and many of my ‘families’ have been found through volunteering. When I think about what makes a community tick, it’s often not the grand gestures. It’s the small things. A neighbour checking in. Another one waiting while you start your car with their jump leads.
That’s the magic of The Big Help Out. One hour of your time, and suddenly your street, your block of flats, your corner of the country, looks a little different. It started in 2023 as part of the King’s Coronation celebrations — a national push to make volunteering easier, and open to everyone.
Two years on, it’s become one of those rare moments in the diary when the whole country rolls up its sleeves at once. Last year alone, the Big Help Out clocked up an extraordinary 6.5 million acts of volunteering. And it works. Polling found that 76% of people who took part felt a stronger sense of belonging in their community afterwards.
At a time when we’re constantly being told that Britain is more divided, lonelier, and more cut off from one another than ever, that number feels like real hope. It tells us that the antidote is closer than we think, usually about five doors down. And it gets better. This year, The Big Help Out is partnering up with The Big Lunch to bring millions of people together on the 5th to 8th of June for the UK’s biggest weekend of friendship, food, fun and action – and everyone’s invited.
People sometimes tell me they don’t know where to begin, or they worry they don’t have the skills to help out. But The Big Help Out and The Big Lunch are built to be easy – you can decide how much time you want to give and what type of activity you want to help with. All you need is curiosity and a willingness to show up.
One of our Challenges recently was with the Sprouts Community Food Charity in Stockton-on-Tees, a brilliant, largely women-led project running international community cafés, cooking workshops, a food shop and a garden. One minute you’re chopping onions next to women cooking dishes from Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Nigeria and the Philippines. The next you’re sorting out donations on the shop floor.
The people I’ve met have stayed with me ever since. Debbie, Jo and some of the team came to London last year to receive the King’s Award for Volunteering. We met for a wild boat trip down the Thames before they set off to the Palace and as we whizzed along, wind in our hair, shouting above the noise, I felt truly elated that I had met this wonderful band of people.
This is what I love about volunteering. It’s the teams you become part of. You may go for an hour but you come away with a new Whatsapp group and the urge to do it all over again next weekend. If you’re inspired, visit thebigdo.com. Put in your postcode and you’ll find everything from a one-hour litter pick, a half-day at a community garden, bike mechanic shifts, comms and social support, befriending visits, food bank sorts, conservation projects and more.
And if you’d rather host your own event, the site has everything you need for that too – a Big Lunch on your street, a coffee morning, or a drop-in session with your local sports club. Another recent Challenge was to build a dementia village and Danny turned up with his digger. He followed us to the next Challenge. And the next. “It’s better than therapy” he said, “I feel part of a family now”.
Being part of a community, the shared experience, is the alchemy that can turn a life around. So jumpsuit on, sleeves up. Can you help us?
Orphan helped by kind strangers help refugees 35 years on
John Robinson is a volunteer at Horatio’s Garden in Sheffield, the charity that creates gardens at spinal injury hospitals. He is in a wheelchair himself, following a road accident when he was 18, but now he offers advice and support to patients coming to terms with their life-changing condition, as they face months in hospital and new challenges.
Hearing how he is helping others in the position he once found himself in, made me think of another unlikely band of volunteers. 35 years ago, we were challenged to renovate an orphanage in Siret, near the border with Ukraine.
We went out with a plane load of builders and doctors to try and help 600 children cooped up like battery hens; no running water or electricity, raw sewage in the corridors. What followed is a 35 year miracle story as the original volunteers have stayed involved and truly changed lives.
Many of those ‘orphans’, now in their 30s and 40s, are living in sheltered housing, built by the volunteers. When war broke out in Ukraine and refugees fled over the border, the orphans offered up their beds to them.
The once desperate helping the now desperate. What a humanitarian arc.
The power of a jumpsuit
A girl in Ikea stopped me with a radiant smile and said “You’re either my Auntie or you’re part of my childhood”. I felt ridiculously touched.
In Amandaland, Amanda says “Who doesn’t love a hot blonde in a hard hat? Ask Anneka Rice” and Mal goes a bit goofy as he remembers watching Challenge as a teenager. I can’t repeat what he says as this is a family newspaper, but I’m honoured to be part of anyone’s childhood.
This blurring of reality happens the whole time. I once featured unwittingly in a beer commercial. A jumpsuited ‘me’ landed her helicopter, jumped off a turret and emerged dripping from the moat. “I bet she drinks Carling Black Label” said a fishermen on the bank. “No, but I bet they do” said the other one, as my crew emerged shortly after.
When I was pregnant, I was shocked to see my Spitting Image puppet giving birth to my son, who emerged from my birth canal wearing a jumpsuit, along with film crew.
There was a moment on Netflix’s Rivals when I thought ‘here we go again” when a character in a jumpsuit is asked if they’re off on a treasure hunt. Who knew the power of a jumpsuit!
