Two Belsize locals are helping people who find themselves in the worst kind of situations. Fifteen months ago, Tonia Perry and Kiri Pond set up Holding Your Online Hands (HYOH), a community interest company to build bridges for isolated people.
At their weekly in-person hub, Tonia and Kiri deal with other people’s bureaucratic nightmares, food insecurity, loneliness and how, since post-covid, life increasingly asks for us to navigate the online world.
HYOH Founder Tonia grew up as the youngest of ten children in a working-class family in Birmingham. In 2024, after decades in corporate IT, she set up a mentorship programme. That’s when she met her co-founder Kiri who was struggling to find any job which didn’t require online skills. After nine months of meetings, Tonia realised that the two of them should create the career which Kiri was seeking and fulfil their mutual desire to support the community around them.
This year their hard work has earned them two prestigious national SME awards. Holding Your Online Hands won Best Community Support Initiative 2026 and Social Impact & Digital Inclusion 2026.
With full support from Camden Council, the duo has managed to help more than 80 families. Next up in their partnership with Camden, HYOH is planning to get involved with the Camden services designed to help people in extreme weather conditions.
In interview, Tonia and Kiri began by sharing the story of a 97-year-old military veteran. “Peter came to us with a debt of £2000 for utilities,” Tonia began, “and after quite some time, we managed to get his debt cancelled. You see there’s no way Peter could pay that much money. He lives on £35 a month.” Naturally Peter depends on free services and charities and even if he could afford internet connection, he doesn’t want to be online. “Ironically,” continued Tonia, “in the same year that Peter was invited to lunch with the King on his Royal birthday, he was using food banks.”
Holding Your Online Hands supports people of all ages in poverty or debt. It’s not just that HYOH is a referral partner with food and baby banks and London funds which provide vouchers and free necessities, but also the team give as long as it takes to make calls and write emails on behalf of those who are stuck. Through direct debit via HYOH, Peter now pays £20 per month for his utilities.
“A lot of the places we have to deal with don’t always communicate accurately or humanely with the public,” says Kiri. Which brings us to the story of an 83-year-old single man who received an undated letter, giving him a terrifying one month to remove his ‘illegally built’ conservatory. Within hours of receiving an email from HYOH, the council replied that the letter had been sent to the wrong address!
Another aspect of Holding Your Online Hands is its role in the Ask For Angela campaign which encourages people who are feeling threatened to ask for help. Vulnerable people can find a haven at the current HYOH clinic at no 7. in the O2 Centre, Finchley Road, or link to Tonia or Kiri online.
“Our aim is to establish another 3 drop-in clinics – to also be in south, west and east Camden. If we can continue to have an impact in Camden then eventually the Holding Your Online Hands model can be extended throughout London,” Tonia explains.
With success so dependent on teamwork, Tonia and Kiri are hiring valuable helpers. The two newest volunteers bring data protection and fund-raising skills, and classroom experience of SEND children. One of them is expecting, so her volunteering can be as flexible as she needs. This reflects one of the key HYOH mission statements – ‘mother friendly, mother first.’
With three young children, Kiri is familiar with life at the school gates nowadays. Many of the HYOH community value Kiri’s empathy and the trust which she, and Tonia, inspire. One single parent wrote to them, “The things you do might seem like ‘little things’ to you, but those ‘little things’ have a way of making lives better and brighter. Thank you.”
The Thursday 10am-4pm free drop-in clinic is upstairs at the O2 Centre, 255 Finchley Road. At no. 7, pass through the Carib Eats Canteen to reach the Holding Your Online Hands office.
www.holdingyouronlinehands.co.uk
Email: info@holding-your-online-hands.co.uk
