Our Commission
The story so far
The Elmbridge Poverty Truth Commission (PTC) is being co-facilitated by Tom Walden, Policy and Communications Manager at Walton Charity, and Alicia Mason, Walton Charity’s Community Engagement Coordinator. Starting in October 2025, we’ll add a new diary entry here every month reflecting on the progress of our Commission thus far.
January 2026
The year got off to rather a chilly start, with temperatures falling to -7 degrees on the coldest days here in Walton. Now there is a whisper of spring in the air, with the hardiest daffodils already beginning to raise their lovely heads.
So it is that we are sowing the seeds for our first group meeting with our Community Commissioners, scheduled to take place in the middle of February. One more Commissioner has joined our ranks these month, and I’m also excited to have our colleague, Lisa, on board, providing pastoral support to our group members. She’s been living and working in the area for a number of years, and her knowledge of all things Elmbridge, from which organisations we should contact next, to how often the buses come (or don’t come), is proving invaluable for planning our Commission.
But things don’t always go to plan. Between the school pick-up, urgent work responsibilities and aching backs, our Commissioners have a lot on their plate, and sometimes our well-laid arrangements for meetups can end up falling through. In one particularly hectic week, we had arranged four different check-in meetings with individual Commissioners, but in the end, only one could go ahead. Rearranged or cancelled plans can be frustrating for everyone, but they’re also emblematic of how uncertain life can be when you don’t have a financial nest egg or a support network of friends and family close by.
This will be one of the key challenges of our PTC, supporting those who want to be a part of it to stay involved by working around their schedules, while also keeping the when and where of our meetings as consistent as we can. All we can do is keep learning as we go through the project, and in that, I want to learn from other groups who’ve taken a similar approach. Tom and I shared lunch with the wonderful ladies at Kingston Women’s Hub Survivors’ Forum, and heard from them how much it meant to be in a space with others who would ‘get’ them. No stigma, no judgement, just supporting each other, translating what they had experienced into positive action that could give other women their voices back. It was a privilege to be in the room with them.
On my other travels this month, I’ve been to The Bridge, Mole Valley Employment Hub, Weybridge Foodbank, St John’s Church Community Café, and The Eikon Charity. I want to make good on my promise to get out into the community. We still need more Community Commissioners, especially those aged under 30 or over 70, and people from further afield in the borough than Walton and Hersham. The only way to meet people is to meet people.
But it’s also important to nourish our existing connections. Romeo is a passionate Community Commissioner from the Suffolk PTC, whom we met at the Commissioners’ Gathering back in October. He kindly agreed that we could use his photo in the redesign of our PTC leaflet, and he posted the finished design on the Facebook and Instagram pages of the Ipswich Romanian Community, of which he is the CEO and founder. With his help, we were able to spread the word about Poverty Truth.
Our seeds are sown, and they are beginning to take root.
Alicia Mason
December 2025
We’re now into double figures – ten Community Commissioners on board, with that number set to grow in the New Year. Ours is a truly eclectic group, with Community Commissioners hailing from all over the world.
Yet even as more people join our group, there’s been a sense of gently winding down as 2025 comes to an end, of taking a moment to breathe before things really get going in 2026.
I’ve been using that time to reflect on the kinds of conversations we’re likely to have once our meetings are up and running. Some may choose to recount some of the darkest times in their lives, or may still be living them – how can we truly be there for them in those moments? Our Commissioners have a wealth of different experiences, and so will likely come at these issues from very different perspectives. Some have moved here voluntarily from another country, some have been forced to move here, while others were born and raised in the UK. How will we make sure that everyone is included and feels able to participate?
I don’t have the answers to these questions right now, but looking ahead to the New Year, I’m keen to put relationships first. I will make a point of regularly visiting the same community spaces, like The Bridge, foodbanks in Walton, Hersham and Weybridge, the Kingston Survivors’ Forum, the Elmbridge Women’s Hub, coffee mornings at Fenner and Mayfield House, and community breakfasts. If I meet the same people in the same place multiple times, it’ll allow familiarity and trust to develop, and that’s when good things start to happen. That’s especially true when the alternative is to jump right in, sales-pitch style, and immediately start talking about the project with someone who doesn’t know me from Adam and is probably quite eager to grab their food parcel or free meal and then leave.
The slower approach takes more time, but luckily, that way of working is built into the PTC. In the long run, it will surely pay dividends. In the words of Nigerian philosopher Bayo Akomolafe: ‘the times are urgent; so slow down.’
Alicia Mason
November 2025
Three has become seven, with an eighth still to come. Slowly but surely, our Commission is growing. We’ve heard from Commissioners who are fascinated by history and politics, who love to cycle, who’ve lived in multiple continents, who are tired of trying to decipher systems that remain stubbornly, obtusely opaque and impersonal.
“It’s like trying to play chess, and you think you’ve figured out a response to all of your opponent’s moves, and then they go and set the board on fire.”
Right now, the difficult part is remembering to go slowly. Some of our Commissioners come to our catch-ups armed with pen and paper, ready to take notes, plan, research, think, fix. How do we keep up their enthusiasm while reminding them that we’re not going to be solving any problems just yet?
This week, a co-facilitator with the Peterborough PTC shared his insights into the process, and he was quite clear that the best thing to come out of the Commission has been the relationships it has nurtured. He described one friendship between a Civic Commissioner who was head of a local housing association, and a Community Commissioner who has experienced homelessness. “Now,” he said, “whenever that Civic Commissioner is designing a new policy within his organisation, he’ll be thinking, ‘How will this affect my friend?’”.
Those human connections, it seems, make all the difference, and that’s why we need to take the time to build them up. You could argue that it shouldn’t have to be this way. Policymakers should think carefully about how their decisions will affect people and care about those in need whether they know them personally or not. But the PTC approach acknowledges the fact that, rightly or wrongly, humans are more likely to bestow their time, energy and resources on those whom they consider to be part of their group, their inner circle.
My hope is that our PTC will create a circle where previously there was none, and that this circle will gradually grow outwards, bringing in more and more people as the impact of our approach makes itself felt. Everyone deserves to be listened to and celebrated. And what’s more, we need to hear from everyone. How else would service providers in Peterborough know that their caller ID coming up as ‘number withheld’ feels stressful and threatening for people who aren’t sure who’s going to be on the end of the phone, and fear that they’re going to be dealing with a scammer or a robot? The seemingly little things that you’d never think of unless you’d personally been through it can make someone’s day that much easier, or else send them into a tailspin.
In recent weeks, I’ve been concerned about how my lack of lived experience of poverty, and therefore relative privilege compared to our Commissioners, could get in the way of trust and open communication. I’m now realising that, assuming our PTC goes well, our Commissioners themselves are in a fortunate position compared to many others in the community, who aren’t able to engage with any kind of support and have no-one listening to their voice. How might we one day reach them?
We want to talk to as many people around the borough as we can. To that end, we’ve been speaking to organisations like Elmbridge CAN, Lower Green Community Centre, Voices of Hope, Oasis, PA Housing, Weybridge Foodbank, and more. We’ve had a lot of enthusiasm from people who say they’ll speak to their client base and help us recruit Community Commissioners. We’ve also faced challenges and doubts – what makes the PTC different from all the other initiatives that have promised change, but in the end haven’t led to very much?
Once again, it’s the relationships we build. This is not an hour-long meeting, a referral, and a wave-you-on-your-way. This is months, years, of cups of coffee and finger food and tears and laughter and marker pens and treasured possessions, and above all, deep listening and belonging.
Alicia Mason
October 2025
We’re already in the thick of it, and yet we’re only just getting started. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.
In the month since I joined Walton Charity, I feel that I’ve already learned more things worth knowing than five years of PhD studies taught me. I’ve met with people who are hungry for change and connection.
That’s what we’re hoping to create with the Elmbridge Poverty Truth Commission, a new participatory approach based on a model that’s been successful nationwide. We want to create a space where people who’ve lived the daily struggle of making ends meet can find their people and their voice. They will decide which local decision-makers from charities, government and business they want to work with, which issues are the most pressing to address, and how to build systems, policies and communities that work for local people.
This kind of work requires a lot of stubborn hope. That was the theme of the Commissioners’ Gathering that my colleague and co-facilitator Tom and I attended in Derbyshire earlier this month. The Gathering was a chance for Commissions from all around the country to come together to share their wisdom and to take part in a fun couple of days of workshops that encouraged us to use colour and movement to tell our stories. The voices of Community Commissioners, people who have experienced the reality of not having enough to live on, were placed front and centre. We saw tears in many eyes as our companions spoke of benefits denied, council taxes unpaid, and neurodivergent children forced out of mainstream education.
But between the vibrant silk and streamers littering the floor, conversations with the goats in the next field over, and toe-tapping renditions of Singin’ in the Rain, the joy and hilarity in that place was unmistakeable. The Commissioners hailed from all over the country, from Bournemouth to South Shields, and clearly had differing political views, in many cases, but it was clear to me that every single person in the room belonged to that chosen family and drew great delight from their belonging.
As the Gathering went on, I noticed that one Commissioner had a habit of accompanying rounds of applause with loud cheers. At first it sounded strange, surprising, as he was the only one making noise, but after a while, I couldn’t hear it without smiling. Inspired by the warmth and openness of the other Commissioners, I went up to this man and told him that it made my day to hear him cheer like that.
“That’s what hope is,” he said. “Cheering is hope.”
Even though Tom and I had to rush back from Derbyshire to make it back for the Elmbridge Poverty Truth Forum here in Walton, the timing was fortuitous, as the Gathering had made me all the more eager to share our plans for our own Commission and to hit the ground running.
The Elmbridge PTC is now well underway. We have our first three Community Commissioners already on board, and we’re hoping to meet several more in the weeks to come. Already, it has really hit home to me that poverty can happen to anyone. A few too many setbacks, too close together, can pull anyone under and make it near impossible to come back to the surface.
One question remains for me: how can I, as someone who has never truly felt the sharp end of the cost of living, create a safe space for those who have? Can the Commissioners trust me, and can I trust myself, to understand what it is like to live through trials that I have never yet experienced?
I may never have the deep visceral understanding of someone with lived experience, and I want to be honest with Commissioners about that. But I do have a desire to listen and to learn. I want to help each of our Commissioners find their own chosen family, their own expression of stubborn hope.
I’m so excited to see what the Elmbridge Poverty Truth Commission will bring. Walton and Hersham Foodbank distributed over 5000 food parcels to local people in the past year, nearly half of which went to children. The need is greater than ever, and that is why we must abandon quick fixes and make the effort to build more belonging in our community.