Sitting across from Phil, who seemed like a lovely chap, I had the distinct impression that I had bitten off more than I could chew, and I’m not talking about the delicious lemon drizzle slice. A dear friend of mine had put my name forward to him as a potential Community what-now? I was being invited to sit in a room full of strangers and talk about the hardships I’ve had?

What happened to “Pull yourself up by the bootstraps and carry on?”

The Morecambe Bay Poverty Truth Commission, that’s what.

It’s hard to believe I wrote these words in September, and it’s already April. We’re about 4 weeks away from the Round 3 launch event and this experience has already broken me wide open and rebuilt several misconceptions I had about poverty. It suits the suits that when you hear the word “poverty”, most of us think of Victorian waifs, or maybe third world countries. You don’t think immediately think “heating or eating”, or feeling sideswiped when the bus fare increases 50% overnight.

I was really reluctant at first.

I’ve been keeping a diary, you see, because I sensed at the start that I would want to look back over this experience, and the hardness I felt when I walked in to my first meeting was all over my early entries. Bristly, not friendly, standoffish and probably downright rude. What could I possibly contribute? I don’t know anything about this stuff! Don’t they know I’m a fraud? I’m surprised I wasn’t kicked out. But Phil and Ally and Erin and my fellow Community Commissioners knew something I didn’t – this process genuinely changes people who come into contact with it. You get to see there’s a different way to work, without the fancy titles and the power imbalance of the world outside the meeting rooms.

I’m naturally a very introverted person, and I simply hate talking about myself. My friends were very used to my aphorism that “You shouldn’t share your problems, half the people you tell don’t care and the other half are glad you’re up against it”. A healthy outlook. Not so here. After getting to understand the broad stripes of the issues which brought people to the process, we started with the personal experiences in earnest. In bar work, you learn pretty quickly that everyone’s got a story that will break your heart and most of them are only a drink away from telling you theirs, but we were talking about overcoming abuse, addiction and truly horrific experiences over coffee, mostly in the middle of the day. The systemic breakdown is heartbreaking en masse, and nobody shies away from the fact the fury you feel about it is righteous. But the gift of the PTC is the hope it imbues you with.

We haven’t met the Civic Commissioners yet, we do that after the launch event, but already by sharing our issues among the Community Commissioners it feels lighter, like something we can take action to change. In the community meetings, we’ve laughed and raged and cried. We’ve suffered a loss from our ranks, an amazing chap called Grahame whose desire for change and driving passion to help others has fired us all up, and we’re feeling heart-sore for missing him but that little balloon of PTC hope keeps bobbing along beside us. I’m so honoured to call that room of strangers my friends now, and I’m excited to bring our issues to the launch event in May to see what change we can effect.