All the best ideas seem to arrive not after an arduous process of planning, but as sudden moments of divine inspiration.

This can certainly be said of Helping Hands Penarth, which was founded a year ago today to help the town's most vulnerable residents through the pandemic.

"So the original inspiration was that I'd been back and forth to my mum who was isolating at the beginning of lockdown," founder Kathryn Easthope tells Nub News.

"I was dropping stuff off and talking to her through the window, and I just thought 'it must be awful for those who haven't got anybody'.

"So I just decided to create the group. I thought I'd leave it for 24 hours, and didn't really expect a response."

Three hundred and sixty-five days, 2,700 members and countless good deeds later - Helping Hands has done what it set out to achieve and so much more... and it's not even beginning to wind down.

They have organised book collection boxes for children, delivered necessities to care homes, battled loneliness and even organised PPE for frontline workers.

Much of this has been funded by the sale of homemade masks.

Kathryn is adamant that she deserves very little credit. One of the most remarkable things about Helping Hands is how it has brought the community together to form a team of volunteers.

Rowley's The Jewellers offered up her shopfront during lockdown to be used as a distribution hub, the Town Council has printed publicity leaflets, and an army of "Sewing Bees" has produced boxes full of masks.

"I don't think that I've done anything special," Kathryn insists.

"It's just been amazing to see how many lovely people there are out there. We worked together and bounced off each other a lot.

"So although I came up with the idea, it would never got to where it is without key people and all the volunteers in Penarth who have really carried it through."

But members of the Helping Hands Facebook page are unanimous in their praise for Kathryn and the team.

One likened Kathryn to "Penarth's incarnation of 'Cometh the hour...'"

Why has Kathryn been so driven to help others in her community?

"It's two things really. One is that I don't like the thought of people struggling and not having anybody.

"The other reason, which is a selfish reason, is that with my son and his situation and all his disabilities, if I didn't have a focus, I would have felt depressed and isolated.

"Whereas now I've got this. It's turned a negative experience into something positive."

Perhaps, then, if there is one thing to learn from this strange first year for Helping Hands Penarth, it is this:

That helping others can feel good.