Cycling Without Age

The News, Portsmouth

The celebration event for securing the funding from League of Friends (LOF)

Transcript

00:00So my name's Jenny and I'm the volunteer coordinator for Cycling Without Age Portsmouth

00:25and Hayling Island and we're down at St Mary's Hospital today for a celebration event with

00:32the League of Friends of St Mary's who have basically saved our service. We got to the

00:38end of about April time and announced to our community and just to let people know that

00:46if we didn't get £25,000 by the end of June, unfortunately the service was going to have

00:54to close and we were just blown away by all the support we had and all the people coming

00:59together offering solutions and suggestions and introductions, one of them being our lovely

01:05Adrian behind us who introduced us to the League of Friends of St Mary's. So they've

01:14given us a large amount of money which is going to help us become more sustainable over

01:19the next three years so yeah we're very excited and today we're here celebrating that so yeah

01:25thanks for coming down. So my name's Karen Hobbs, I'm the community services and business

01:28development manager for the U Trust. I've worked for the U Trust nearly three years

01:32now and I look after a couple of services and one team is a social prescribing for South

01:38Coast Primary Care Network, Cycling Without Age and I support the business development

01:43team for the U Trust as well. So the money's going to help pay for our coordinator and

01:47the coordinator runs the service, without the coordinator we wouldn't be able to run

01:50the service at all. So the coordinator looks after our pilots, so we have our volunteer

01:55pilots who are trained and we couldn't do the service without them either. We need more

02:00pilots to meet the demand that all this social media and everything that's been raised over

02:06the last few months, so actually the demand has gone up so we need more pilots to be able

02:11to deliver the service and the coordinator receives referrals, networks, connects with

02:16organisations so we can reach more people and take more people out. So the future is

02:24that we want to continue but I want to grow and develop the service. I want to make it

02:28bigger and better and reach more people. More people are aware of it, a clearer process

02:34of how to refer to meet the demand, more pilots, a really lovely group of volunteers that we

02:40can all work together and I think it's going to be really successful. I'd love to do more

02:45chapters, I'd like to go further, I know the Isle of Wight's really keen to get involved,

02:49the New Forest, Southampton, so I'd be really really keen to expand the service and we just

02:55need to get it right in Portsmouth and Hayley. I'm Jonathan Kemp, I'm the Chairman of the

02:59Trustees of the League of Friends of St Mary's Hospital here in Portsmouth and we've been

03:05around for more than 70 years helping the staff and the patients and departments funding

03:11purchase of equipment, providing comfort, so teas, coffees etc etc and now with less

03:19demand here at the hospital, because it's not a hospital anymore, we've now been approached

03:24by the U Trust who run this fantastic facility, cycling with our age and we're delighted to

03:31be giving them some funding that will then keep it going for the next three years.

03:41This is a vital vital service, it gets people who might be housebound or with limited

03:48mobility out and about in the fresh air, in the beautiful sunshine and in all weathers sometimes

03:55but they're interacting with the local environment, they're interacting with the pilot who's who's

04:00pedalling behind, they're interacting with their carers, other people in society, so what

04:06you're doing is you're getting them out and about to build relationships or even just a simple

04:12interaction for one hour a day, something like that. They get out, they see things in the city

04:17that they might not have seen for years or if at all they can have a tea or coffee, they can stop,

04:22they can see so much more and build a much better resilient social community.

05:22you

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