Handcross

Help at Hand: held their Annual General Meeting last Wednesday evening; the meeting was well attended mainly by those volunteers who act as drivers or duty officers so it was nice to be able to put faces to names! For those of you who have never heard of Help at Hand or who are unsure of just exactly what it is, it is a local organisation run by volunteers who provide a service to those in need. The need that is met is that of a lift mainly to medical appointments and the like but not necessarily entirely that. Whilst it is run by volunteers, it does rely on donations from users to pay the small running costs, namely the opportunity to pay the drivers up to 45p a mile towards their running costs (fuel, insurance, tax etc), so if you are regular or new user please do make use of the envelope on the seat to show your appreciation, it would be much appreciated. If you would like more information about the organisation or would like to offer your services, please get in touch with Ian Ratcliffe on 400763 but here's a little information to maybe tempt you: the role of a Duty Officer is to man the phones, usually no more than twice a month, when you take calls from those in need and match them with a driver; this will only take up a morning, between 9am and 12 noon. The role of a driver is just that, to take those in need to wherever they need to be and this fits around your own commitments. As you can see, neither role is particularly onerous but the more volunteers there are for both roles, particularly drivers, spreads the load further. One of the underlying advantages to all this is you get to make new friends both young and old not just in and around the village but the parish as a whole as Help at Hand is available to everyone, not only in Handcross but Pease Pottage, Slaugham and Warninglid. Finally, for your information, 273 people were assisted by volunteers during 2017 which, whilst in the grand scheme of things doesn't seem many but if you need to get to an appointment and have no family or

At the end of the meeting the conversation turned to the topic of defibrillators and how many there were in the village, something that had been raised on social media recently. I understand there are currently two in the village: one at the surgery and the other at the Hardware Shop, the latter having been donated to the village by a heart charity (whose name escapes me at the time of writing!), and all we needed to do was find somewhere to put it and cover the costs of installation ourselves. It seems that there is interest in possibly getting another one to go at the other end of the village, possibly at the Royal Oak if it can be arranged. The conversation then moved to how to pay and Ian mentioned that he and his wife, Jane, had raised funds through their Big Breakfasts over the past couple of years which they still had thanks to the donation mentioned above. They would be happy to use this to fund another one and the meeting agreed to the suggestion that Help at Hand donate some of their funds towards this, which was very generous. Hopefully we will soon be in the lucky position to have two defibrillators available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, should we ever have the need to use them. With regard to training in the use of them, they are very easy to use in that full, clear and precise instructions come with them but I do know that training can be provided and should there be an interest in this, please let me know and I will pass on your details to someone (again, not sure at the time of writing!) who can help.

Upcoming meetings: There are another couple of Annual General Meetings coming up early next month, the first will be on 1 May and that is for the Management Committee of the Parish Hall. You might want to make a note of this one as I know one of the topics up for discussion is the refurbishment of the Hall which, I am sure you will agree if you are a user of the Hall, is long overdue! The one after that is the meeting of the Community Bus Committee which is being held on 8 May. The former meeting will be from 7.30pm and the latter will be held in the afternoon, starting I understand at 3.30pm. I will give more information on both meetings a little nearer the time but like Help at Hand, both are made up of volunteers and I know would welcome new members so if you would like to get more involved in the village and have time on your hands, do go along if you can, you might be pleasantly surprised at the welcome you will receive.