Volunteers praised for community help

Maidenhead: Charities and organisations stepping up once again

Maidenhead volunteers have been praised for their ‘overwhelming’ response to the second lockdown as people once again have turned to the community for support.

Charities and organisation across the area have resumed their COVID-19 response, with many not even stopping in the time between the two lockdowns.

Volunteers have once again been helping vulnerable and lonely people with getting their shopping, collecting prescriptions, walking dogs or even just offering a friendly phone call.

As well as all the above, volunteers with Maidenhead Bridge Rotary Club have been putting together food parcels for families in need, and during Halloween, they even put together boxes containing sweets and pumpkins.

Lisa Hunter, of Maidenhead Bridge Rotary, said: “We have been supporting people right the way from March, still doing shopping and helping people, now we have gone back to lockdown we think more will come forward.

“It’s not just about

providing health and support, it's about bringing smiles to their faces.”

With Christmas coming up, Lisa added that festive ideas are also being incorporated into their support.

She said: “We are planning on doing Christmas hampers for families we have been supporting with food parcels, but we're also looking out for the people alone without families, so we will deliver some nice things over the Christmas period to let them know people are thinking about them.”

When lockdown first took hold in March, charities and volunteers had very little to work with in terms of having an established volunteer network and knowing who in the area was in need.

This time around, though, they have a head start. Magpies in the

Community, the charitable arm of Maidenhead United FC, already has 170 DBS-checked volunteers it can call on as the public’s need increases.

Sasha Bardwell, who is running the call service with Helen Park, also praised the public for ‘learning lessons’ from the first lockdown to help them be more independent this time around.

She said: “We are currently finding that lessons have been learned from the first lockdown because our demand has gone down.

“We have people that are more independent or not shielding because they don’t have to any more. A lot of them have managed to get food delivered to their house whereas a few months ago that was nigh on impossible.

“We are expecting the phone calls to come. We want to promote it to the community. A lot of residents that are shielding don’t have access to the internet, it’s about making people aware of the support that’s available to them.”

Meanwhile, volunteers for Helping Hands, associated with Al-Tawheed Islamic Education Centre Maidenhead, are ready for action once again now that lockdown has resumed. So far things have been much quieter than first time around, but the volunteers are ready to help older and more isolated residents who need support.

Shazia Ali, a call handler for Helping

Hand, reflected on the impact the service can have on the lives of people they help.

She said: “The feedback has been amazing, the messages they send when you drop the shopping off – they look forward to you coming to see them.

“One lady wrote me a letter, she said ‘when you come you light up my doorstep’ and she would put on her best clothes when I came.”

Maidenhead Bridge Rotary Club, Magpies in the Community and Helping Hand are just a selection of the many charities helping in the Maidenhead Community. For more information on volunteering or support, visit maidenheadbridgerotary.org.uk or www.magpiesinthecommunity.org/ and visit https://scripts.rbwm. gov.uk/scripts/volunteers/search to see the full list of COVID-support organisations operating in the Royal Borough.