**The Isle of Wight County Press is partnering with Christ the King College in Newport to give young reporters the chance to find out what journalism is all about. We hope you enjoy their stories.

When Covid-19 first hit huge businesses, corporations took a direct hit, massively reducing business revenue and services output.

But how did the national pandemic affect charities when they almost entirely rely on public input?

Many charities had to stop production entirely during the many lockdown periods.

Choices such as this are still causing impacts today, despite the first lockdown occurring nearly three years ago.

Over 90 per cent of charities across England in 2021 have said they have experienced some negative impact due to the pandemic, whether on service delivery, finances or staff and staff morale. 60 per cent saw a loss of income and a third (32 per cent) saw a shortage of volunteers.

Charities on the Isle of Wight are impacted, with the limited resources a small Island can provide.

I spoke directly with one of the co-founders of the Daisy Chains IW Children's Charity, Mandy Fuller.

She explained how funding had been an issue for the charity as they “were unable to do any of the usual fundraising events” that brought in most of their yearly income but turned to online events which helped Daisy Chains through the constricting year.

But even after the guidelines were lifted and Covid floated into the background the charity still had trouble Mandy mentioned how she had “found that a lot of people since the pandemic are struggling more than they did before meaning that they don't have as much income to spare meaning donations are down, a lot of businesses that used to support the charity have now closed or downsized meaning less support.”

She also went on to discuss some of the other issues that Covid has caused, such as the lack of volunteers, this already being an issue with the Isle of Wight’s small community.

The pandemic caused a lot of problems for many different people meaning they don’t have as much time to volunteer to help with a fundraiser.

Overall, she told me that the charity’s biggest problem was the lack of consistent funding, due to the reasons discussed above.

This once again shows the magnitude of Covid-19’s effect on charities, and with the energy crisis that is currently happening in England, it isn’t getting any easier.