Dozens of women trekked to Buckingham Palace with their children yesterday to draw attention to living in isolation in London’s East End.

Heba women’s training and enterprise project in Brick Lane, which gives isolated women a way into the community through job training and language lessons, is struggling to stay open.

It ran out of cash last year when the recession closed down the City Fringe Partnership which had been funding it for 40 years.

“Our founder and director Kay Jordan died at Christmas,” said project manager Anne Wilding. “Every month our continued survival without her expertise and guidance seems like a miracle.”

The weather just held out long enough for a picnic tea in St James’s Park at the end of the seven-mile sponsored walk from Brick Lane. The first walk last year raised �4,000—but the centre needs around �200,000 just to keep going.