1 minute of your time could make a real difference
 

NatWest is giving local charities all over the country the opportunity to make others aware of what they do, and for the public to vote for the charities that they would like to be in with a chance of winning up to £6000 from the RBS Group

After thinking seriously about it for over a year, I have recently signed up to join SERV Hampshire - this charity provides a voluntary out of hours service to local hospitals who need to transport blood, organs or human milk. The NHS does not have a service to do this outside of 'normal office hours', using the SERV volunteers saves hospitals having to spend out money for taxis and couriers - meaning this money can be spent on more important things.

I have a real phobia of needles, so will never be able to give blood, I also hate hospitals, getting up in the middle of the night and I don't seem to have the time to fart at the moment, let alone 'do charity work'

However this is something I have wanted to do for a long time. My role with the charity will be as a volunteer rider, on standby on designated nights to make emergency, urgent and routine deliveries as required - all expenses will be covered from my own pocket.

SERV Hampshire have registered for a Community Force award, and I would ask if you would be kind enough to give up 1 minute of your time to vote for them on the following link:-
http://communityforce.natwest.com/project/5542
Extra funding will help this charity to run and maintain their existing service, and expand to offer the service to more hospitals.
Please note the following:-

• You can vote for more than one charity (so if you have already voted for another one you can still vote for SERV Hampshire)
  
  You do not need to make any donations
  
  You will need to register if you have not already done so
  
  This whole process should take no longer than a minute, unless you read/type very s l o w l y!

Many thanks for reading

http://www.servhampshire.org.uk/joomla/

Re: 1 minute of your time could make a real difference
 

92 views and no responses?

Anyone voted?

Any questions?

Re: 1 minute of your time could make a real difference
 

I've voted! Only becuase we are doing the same but not going to hijack your thread!

Re: 1 minute of your time could make a real difference
 

Done!

Deffinately a good cause.
Well done on you for volunteering. :thumbsup:

Re: 1 minute of your time could make a real difference
 

I would also be on the list of volunteers if there were a group in my area, so a +1 from me

Re: 1 minute of your time could make a real difference
 

Then why don't some like minded individuals get together and make agroup. All the groups down south have been very helpful so far for us even though we are running to slightly different guidelines and completely different operational activities.

Re: 1 minute of your time could make a real difference
 

Viewed and voted.

Whats not working in your favor is the needing to register in order to vote, I promise the reg process takes 30seconds dont let it put you off.

Re: 1 minute of your time could make a real difference
 

I did try - went to see them at the NEC last year with a view of kicking something off in this area, but I didn't get any info about how to go about things. It's on the back burner at the moment though, until someone works out a way of fitting 30 hours in a day...

Re: 1 minute of your time could make a real difference
 

Registered and voted last night, but laptop battery died whilst I was replying and after a day and night in a hospital without sleep, I couldn't be rsssed to go get a power supply.

+1

Do the volunteers get some advanced training then? Some eager beaver volunteer crashing the bike whilst a patient somewhere is in critical condition waiting for blood or an organ, would be far from ideal. I'd have thought you needed to be police class trained to ride a Blood bike.

Re: 1 minute of your time could make a real difference
 

Guys - many thanks for voting, and apologies for having to register.

In terms of qualifications/training:

All riders who do not hold an 'advanced' qualification (e.g. IAM/ROSPA) are required to be assessed to ensure that they are competent and will not put lives at risk.

Whilst our current bike is liveried with blues (not sure about twos though) we are still 'officially' required to stick to speed limits and all traffic regs, including red lights etc. We are also required to follow 'official' routes between hospitals/drop-offs etc so that we can be easily found/traced in the event of an incident (e.g. breakdown etc)

This is more about saving the hospitals money, rather than getting blood/milk etc as quickly as possible from one place to another, however that side of it does have a certain appeal ;-)

Edit - just found a picture of our bike:-

http://a8.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphot..._6527000_n.jpg