St Catherine's Hospice celebrates volunteers

For St Catherine’s Hospice, volunteers play a significant role, with more than 800 of them helping the hospice deliver its end of life care and support.

Coming from across Sussex and Surrey, volunteers take on 42 varied roles from gardeners and charity shop assistants, to complementary therapists, caterers, and even a caricature artist.

Between them, they volunteer more than 47,000 hours a year.

Sandra Cramp is just one of the hospice’s many volunteers, joining a year ago as a ‘hospice host’.

Sandra said: “I thoroughly enjoy working at the hospice and have met some very inspiring and friendly people.

“There’s always people to guide and support us and I feel privileged to belong to such an outstanding local charity.”

To thank volunteers for their incredible contributions, St Catherine’s is hosting a volunteers’ award evening at Tilgate Golf Club on Wednesday, June 7 to recognise volunteers who have reached five, 10, 15 or 20 years voluntary service with the local charity.

Peter Nesbitt, volunteering development manager at St Catherine’s said: “We’re really lucky to be so well supported by volunteers and we couldn’t provide our range of services without them.

“By giving their time and skills, they’re some of the biggest donors to our hospice and we want to say a huge thank you to every one of them for their unrivalled support.

“We’d especially like to congratulate our volunteers who are reaching a special volunteering milestone with us.

“Their loyalty and dedication to the hospice, and all the people we care for, makes a huge difference at a difficult time.”