Making A Difference

Today is Make A Difference Day – a day dedicated to encouraging people across the country to donate a few hours of their spare time to a good cause by volunteering for a charity, community group, or not for profit organisation.

So it makes sense that we turn our blog spot light on one of our many wonderful volunteers.

Margaret Willson had enjoyed a long, successful career in journalism and public relations – as well as running her business. When she retired, she found herself looking for something she could donate her free time to, and signed up as a volunteer for The Air Ambulance Service.

This is her story…..

So, here I was, retired after 45 years and thinking “what now”? 

I knew I wanted to volunteer for a cause that I could wholeheartedly support; but there are so many – how to choose?

In the end I combined two bits of advice. The first was that given to aspiring authors - write about what you know. The second was an apparent contradiction – do something completely different.
So it must be a charity that felt familiar given my immediate background (science and medical communications) but was unfamiliar too in involving my local community (my work had taken me away from my village because so much time was spent in some far-flung corner of the world). The other “must” was that I wanted it to be a charity for everyone, not a single-issue organisation.
The choice became obvious.  It had to be The Air Ambulance Service (TAAS).

Volunteering for TAAS is the ultimate in multi-tasking.  You get to do a bit of everything – one day I might be going round shops, pubs, clubs, farms or caravan sites collecting our yellow boxes and laboriously counting out and banking the money. Amazing how such easily dismissed coins mount up – particularly those pesky little 5ps!

Another day it could be running a stall at an event, maybe a carnival, a community fun day or a horse show, where you set up a gazebo and display TAAS merchandise with plenty of collecting buckets to tempt punters. Those are the days you pray the rain Gods stay away……

Or it could be standing outside a big supermarket with your bucket – that’s when you really understand how popular TAAS is with the community and the wealth of support and goodwill it generates. It’s lovely when shoppers stop to chat, especially when they tell you that they, or a loved one, were rescued by one of our wonderful heli-crews.  That’s the best antidote to aching feet I can think of.

You get the same positive feeling when you are asked to represent TAAS at a cheque presentation and you realise that, unbeknown to you, a group of men and women have been quietly beavering away raising funds for the air ambulance.

I think my favourite job though is talking to groups. Most of the audience will know  (and be scandalised by) the fact that we get no Government or National Lottery funding, but it’s great to be able to tell them one or two things they may not know – for example, how highly trained our crews are, how fast our response it, how much we need every year, how many missions we’ve flown, that we now have shops, what our plans are for the future and so on.

I’ve been a volunteer for four years and I’ve gained as much, if not more, from volunteering as I’ve given. It’s fun, even on the days the rain Gods don’t favour us. I’ve made new friends, and got to know my community in a way I hadn’t before.  Best of all, you know that even the smallest thing you do or encourage others to do contributes to keeping our helicopter and its life-saving crew flying.
Would I encourage others to volunteer?  Absolutely. In fact, if you are reading this and are not a volunteer already we could do with many more.

To join Margaret and our other amazing volunteers, or to find out more volunteering, click here.