COULD THIS BE YOU?
Are you a car-owner, with a clean licence, who occasionally has some spare time? Perhaps you are recently retired - or have been made redundant - or you children have finally 'flown the nest'?
If so, then YOU ARE GREATLY NEEDED by Outreach and the people Outreach help!
What is Outreach & who do they help? Well, to quote from the entry in the leaflet produced by the Locality Planning Committee, Outreach is your 'local Charity, that exists to help elderly &/or disabled people living in Tedburn-St-Mary, Whitestone & Pathfinder Village who have difficulty in using public transport. "When there is no relative, friend or neighbour available," this Registered Charity "offers transport to attend medical appointments, help with shopping, & sitting services if the main carer needs to go out"
("Whitestone & Holcombe Burnell are both within the area covered by Outreach - but requests rarely come from either of those places at the moment".)
The Co-ordinator, Margot Samuel, holds a list of Volunteer drivers, with details of when they might be available for call-out. People in need of help phone her on 01647 61204. Confidential records are kept of requests & for every call-out the Volunteer driver is paid a very reasonable mileage allowance by the Charity.
Funding comes to the Charity from donations & from money raised at events.
Of course, the more Volunteers there are on the Outreach list, the less each one need to be called out, so new drivers are always welcome, especially as the number of requests for help are coming more frequently now-a-days. In 2002 there was no driver available on only one occasion in November and another in August. Unfortunately, this year, the Co-ordinator was unable to find a driver twice during March, because several volunteers were away & an unprecedented thirty requests had been received by the 17th of that month!
Outreach would be particularly happy to have more Volunteers in Pathfinder Village, where an increasing number of requests are coming from & currently only one Outreach Volunteer actually resides. Also, at present, Outreach has no Volunteers who live in either Whitestone or Holcombe Burnell & would love to have some Volunteers there because both places are within the areas that the Charity Outreach was set up to serve.
The Charity wants to be in a position to say 'Yes' to everyone who needs help. Think how you would feel if 'No' had to be said to a relative or friend of yours (or even you, yourself, another day) & please, if you can spare even only as little as one morning or afternoon a week to help people in great need, do contact the Outreach Co-ordinator, Margot Samuel (01647 61204) as soon as possible.