Norwich and District CAMRA Branch Charity 2021

The year 2020 began, much as any other year, with the Norwich and District Branch of CAMRA looking to choose a Charity of the Year. This process is usually started by emailing all branch members (we have over 4,000) inviting individual members to nominate a charity for consideration. We did this in January of 2020. So far, so good.

We were heartened by the enthusiastic response of our members, who proceeded to nominate more than thirty local charities to us. These charities ranged across the whole field of human life and included charities caring for children and young people, charities dealing with environmental issues, animal welfare, and all aspects of the physical and mental well-being of the people of Norfolk. Although we can only choose one Branch Charity each year, we would like to acknowledge the vital work done by everyone working in the charitable sector in this county.

The next step in the process would have been for the Branch Committee to then take a vote by secret ballot, in April or May, to arrive at a chosen charity. But... by this point, the pandemic was upon us and we had to take the difficult decision to cancel the Norwich Beer Festival and to suspend the process of choosing our charity.

In the early months of this year though, as the covid clouds began to part, we took the decision to start planning again and to re-engage with the task of choosing our Branch Charity. Following much the same procedure as in previous years, only this time using the virtual world of email, social media, and meetings software, we were able to invite Norfolk SEN Network to become the Norwich and District CAMRA Branch Charity 2021.

Pat Brickley is from the charity: “Norfolk SEN Network, a charity supporting families of children and young people with special educational needs, is absolutely delighted to have been chosen as the Beer Festival Charity of the Year. It has been an extremely busy year for the charity as the law on special educational provision remained the same throughout the pandemic and we were inundated with requests for help from parents struggling to get their child’s needs met.”

Michael Ryan