St John Ambulance - Southwick Unit NEW ROOF

All of us will have come across St John Ambulance at some stage either as the reassuring presence at major events looking out for us or perhaps taking up one of their training courses in all aspects of first aid or perhaps even as a cadet and volunteer.

What we probably have not appreciated is the vital role they have been playing during the pandemic. Nationally, SJA has so far recruited and trained over 25,400 volunteers to help the vaccination effort and are administering jabs in some of the mass vaccination centres such as the Brighton Centre and Excel.

Locally Sussex SJA has been training people every weekend at the AMEX and so far put over 800 of those volunteers into action whilst also providing over 13,500 hours of cover onwards at Brighton, Haywards Heath and Worthing Hospitals. And of course, they have backed up the Ambulance Service which has been under so much pressure with COVID as well. Running such a huge organisation as SJA takes a lot of money and of course this year with no fundraising possible or events to attend that source of funds has all but dried up except for grants from the Government.

As a result, the management of the charity has had to take some very tough decisions to cut costs and that involves giving up at least 115 of their properties.

That was to include the Southwick HQ in The Twitten until some of us stepped in and were able to secure a reprieve, but there is a catch. The catch is that the building urgently needs a new roof and the cost has been put at £55,000. That is an extra £55,000 which the SJA does not have and so some of us have teamed up with the Sussex division of SJA and their local volunteers to see if we can raise it.

The good news is that generous donors have already pledged £18,000 leaving us £37,000 to find by the end of this year. CAN YOU HELP US WITH THAT CHALLENGING TARGET?