Like all other organisations the Serbian Council was knocked sideways by the coronavirus pandemic and lockdown and feared that it would have to cease its operations until things went back to a new normal. However, members of the Management Committee felt that it was unacceptable to go into hibernation and seemingly abandon members just at the time they needed the organisation most. The first challenge was to sort out how the Management Committee itself could meet during lockdown to discuss how the organisation could operate and what it could do in these unprecedented times. The solution was to use Zoom to hold virtual management committee meetings. These turned out to be much more successful than had been anticipated – the technology was easy to use and reliable, people could be involved wherever they were and people felt that their time was being used efficiently and effectively because they weren’t wasting time travelling to meetings.
This positive experience liberated the management committee members thinking about what we could do during lockdown. We realised that face to face meetings were not the only option and that we could hold events on line which would be more effective because they could involve more people from all over Britain and that we could hold more events because they were free to run. We turned the difficulty into an opportunity and gave ourselves permission to be creative and take risks in trying new things.
