35 Years of Impact: How Pecan’s Vital Community Work Continues to Evolve
Pecan shared with CIC the amazing wealth of services they have developed for the community as they celebrate their 35th year. And with such an important milestone birthday, the team were excited to create a new visual brand toolkit with CIC that reflected their work and legacy.
Tracey Francis, Marketing Manager and Deborah Hayman-Nkhoma, Head of Services at Pecan
For 35 years, Pecan has served as a vital resource for the Peckham and Southwark communities, working tirelessly to tackle poverty and inequality in all their forms. The organisation’s mission is clear: to end poverty by addressing its root causes and providing tailored support for individuals and families in need.
“PECAN IS A LOCAL COMMUNITY ORGANISATION. IT STARTED IN 1989, SO THIS IS OUR 35TH BIRTHDAY YEAR. THE VISION IS TO END POVERTY IN ALL ITS FORMS, AND WE DO THAT BY LOOKING AT HOW WE CAN INCREASE INCOME, DECREASE INEQUALITY, AND INCREASE SOCIAL COHESION. ”
Deborah Hayman-Nkhoma, Head of Services at Pecan, explains the breadth of their work. “Pecan is a local community organisation. It started in 1989, so this is our 35th birthday year. The vision is to end poverty in all its forms, and we do that by looking at how we can increase income, decrease inequality, and increase social cohesion.”
The services Pecan provides are as diverse as the challenges they aim to solve. These include employment support programmes, a women-only trauma-informed service, and community-building activities through the Together Café. They also manage Southwark Food Bank, which provides emergency food parcels, and the Peckham Pantry, which offers affordable, healthy food to local residents. “The idea,” Deborah adds, “is you’re able to move from reliance on food banks to being able to budget and look at what food you can get with your income.”
For Tracey Francis, Marketing Manager at Pecan, the charity’s impact is deeply personal. “I live within the borough, and I thought it would be great to work more locally and have more of an impact within my community,” she says. “It’s really important to make sure people are very aware that these services are here, because it is for people within the community. Life doesn’t always go the way we expect it to.”
However, despite their significant impact, Pecan’s leadership recognised a critical need to modernise their branding. The existing logo and visual identity no longer captured the warmth, inclusivity, and community spirit of the organisation. Deborah reflects, “Our current logo is blue; it’s a bit cold. It’s known enough, but it could be a bit cold. So how can we capture that warmth and community feel of Pecan in our logo and our branding?”
Tracey heard about the Creative Impact Club (CIC) Impact Awards through connections in the local charity sector and applied for support. “Being a chosen charity is a great step forward,” she shares. “It does allow you to make yourself visible, make yourself known, and also adds another level of professionalism. Visually, people see things that look professional and think differently about it.”
Once selected, Pecan was matched with CIC volunteer designer Bethan Thomas, Senior Graphic Designer, who worked closely with the team to create a new logo and brand toolkit. The process began with a collaborative exploration of Pecan’s history, mission, and values. “We had a really good discussion with Avalyn about Pecan,” Tracey recalls. “We went through the website, we looked at different things, we spoke about our history.”
Bethan’s work was guided by Pecan’s commitment to kindness, belief, and hope. From mood boards to mock-ups, every stage of the process was designed to include feedback from staff, trustees, and volunteers. “The mood board was great because she really captured lots of things that we’d said,” says Tracey. “It was a really good springboard for people to think a bit more about what they liked.”
The final logo and toolkit have been met with enthusiasm across the organisation. “The icons she designed—everybody has gone berserk over them,” Tracey laughs. “They’re great, and I know how they could be used. They sum up Pecan. It’s about people. It’s about community.”
Deborah agrees, reflecting on the first time she saw the new designs. “Coming back and just seeing this lovely, colourful without being childish, warm kind of toolkit that just summed up everything that we’d spoken about in that first brief to me felt really amazing. It does that really well with the sort of connectedness of the little people icons. It gets that warmth across, which I think is the most important thing for Pecan.”
For both Deborah and Tracey, the collaboration with CIC was a transformative experience. “It’s great to have someone to hold your hand through a process that not many people really know how to do,” says Deborah. “Just having that outside eye that can come in, get all the information, and then get creative with it was really lovely.”
Tracey echoes the sentiment, emphasising the collaborative nature of the project. “It really felt like a collaborative process. I think it’s really helpful for community projects or organisations to actually experience doing something like this, because they may not have a head of branding or a big marketing department. This project really challenged us in a positive way.”
As Pecan prepares to roll out their new identity, the organisation remains focused on its mission to support the community in meaningful ways. The refreshed brand, with its warmth and professionalism, reflects the heart of Pecan and signals a new chapter for the charity.
When asked if they would recommend working with CIC to other charities, both Deborah and Tracey respond with a resounding yes. “It’s been a lovely process to be part of,” Deborah concludes. “Not just because something came out of it, but because everyone involved has been really lovely, really welcoming, and really friendly. It’s felt very Pecan.”
Pecan is a community development charity based in Peckham. They work with the local community to help people find a way through seemingly impossible barriers to a better future. Over the last 35 years, they’ve seen thousands of clients flourish through their programmes, including: ex-offenders and their families, refugees and asylum seekers, young people and the long-term unemployed. They advocate for those they work with, challenging inequality and injustice at a local and national level to provide hope and belief in a better future for their community.
Website: www.pecan.org.uk