Marie Curie
Marie Curie are currently looking for more people to consider volunteering a few hours of their time each week to support local people with terminal illnesses and their families. The charity is looking for people who are interested in becoming a ‘Marie Curie Helper’, a volunteer who can visit someone with a terminal illness in their own home to provide companionship and emotional support, as well as practical help.
The Helper Service was started in Somerset in 2009 and has grown to cover 17 other areas across the country.
Marie Curie Helper volunteers give around three hours a week of their time to offer a friendly ear and the opportunity to talk through worries. Volunteers also help by providing practical support, information about local services and enabling carers and family members to take a short break.
We also are looking for volunteer Assessors for the Marie Curie Helper Service, which entails visiting terminally ill people and/or their carers either in their own home, nursing or residential care to identify their needs and determine if the Marie Curie Helper Service would be appropriate for them.
For more on this, including links to Marie Curie please click here.
St Margaret’s Hospice
St. Margaret’s Hospice is hoping to build on the successful 2017 Open Gardens campaign , by encouraging new gardens, whole communities and allotments to take part in the campaign for 2018 , which will take place between May and September. 2018. We can assist with advice, risk assessments and publicity and can also provide volunteer assistance if necessary,
As a local Somerset Charity, we cannot hope to compete with the recruitment publicity from national charity garden schemes and coffee mornings, who can spend more than double our annual income on one advertising campaign, but hope that with the loyal support of local communities such as yourself, we will continue to encourage local people to support local patients.
I would therefore be very grateful if you could forward this email to anyone in your community that you feel may be interested in taking part , or if appropriate, provide me with contact details for local gardening clubs, allotment and horticultural societies.
St Margret’s is also always looking for volunteers to visit patients at the hospice. For more information read their latest newsletter here.