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Rachel Burden

Café Hope is a new space opening up at Radio 4 and we’d love you to come and visit, writes Rachel Burden. It’s a diner with a difference – you might not actually get a cup of tea in our virtual cafe; what I will share with you are stories from amazing people who are trying to help change the lives of the people around them.

At a time when I know the news we hear every day can leave us feeling hopeless, we’re celebrating these amazing individual stories, a reminder that just one person can make a huge difference. My guests are people who haven't just talked about doing something, they've actually got up off the sofa and done it.

Kevin Morland from Liverpool is a perfect example. Being a Hillsborough survivor when he was a young boy, he always felt he was meant to do something positive with his life after he came home from that football match, when so many of his fellow fans didn’t. A painter by trade, he started giving up a bit of his time every week: painting a room for someone who needed it; or redecorating a child’s bedroom for families who couldn’t afford a new bed for them.

Soon, his friends wanted to get involved and give their time and skills to help others in their community. With people’s kindness and generosity, it soon became Kevin’s charity An Hour For Others; it now helps people in the community with home refurbs, children’s groups, and providing grassroots centres where people get support and advice.

“I thought, who am I waiting for? Who will wave a magic wand and say, 'there’s a better community, there’s a kinder person’? I realised that unless I became kinder, unless I became more respectful, I wasn't going to see the change I want to see. All I can do is my little part – and if everybody does that, that’s how the world changes.”

Debbie's story

Someone else who popped into the café was nurse Debbie Meade-Mcloughlin from Preston. At the start of each year, she would collect presents for her daughter Jade, and keep them in a bag ready for Christmas. Tragically Jade took her own life in July 2020, leaving Debbie desperate to find something positive from the grief that was engulfing her. Unsure of what to do with the half-filled present bag, her friends suggested she carry on topping it up and donate it to charity. Family and friends chipped in and the bag was overflowing when it was handed over. Debbie told me the joy she got from seeing the response from the families she donated to spurred her on to start Jade’s Bag.

It has grown each year and now provides everything from new school shoes and toiletries to food bags and furniture: “Jade isn’t here any more but I knew I had to do something in her name. I can’t buy you a house, but I can do little things to help, put food on your table. And my broken heart started to mend a little because there were people out there worse off than me, they were going through something way worse.”

Stef Jones had a complete life turnaround when he left his high-flying career as an advertising executive to become a prison chaplain. But that was only the start of the story. It was when he saw prisoners being released, only to return to prison a few months later, that he came up with the idea to use bikes to help stop the cycle of reoffending. By retraining prison leavers to become mechanics, repairing and refitting abandoned and unclaimed stolen bikes from the Metropolitan Police, it taught them new skills and gave them a confidence to begin a new life away from crime.

“My product isn’t a bike, it’s a bloke that doesn’t go back to prison. When you break it down, we take a bike with a past and a bloke with a past, and hopefully you the consumer can give them a decent future.”

Café Hope

Café Hope is more than a brief moment of happy news to give you a bit of a lift. We get under the skin of what motivates these individuals who’ve often made extraordinary personal sacrifices to help others.

We hear about what went wrong, the ongoing challenges to keep to their mission, and why they keep plugging away when so many others would give up. I’ve been inspired by everyone we’ve met so far – from the drone operator who manages an army of thousands of volunteers to locate lost dogs, to the football dad who’s collected and cleaned truckloads of boots to give to families who can’t afford to buy them, to the quadruple amputee who’s helped show other patients the opportunities life still has to offer when you’ve lost a limb.

We’ve shared tears, laughter, frustrations and most of all hope in the power of people to change lives for the better. I hope you’ll come and join us to share their stories.