New Premises Appeal

New Premises: Powys Samaritans Hwb Cambrian

To Donate to our New Premises Appeal: Please CLICK HERE

The Project

New Premises:

Powys Samaritans Hwb Cambrian

Powys Samaritans is the youngest Samaritans branch (premises based) in the UK, we were set up in the wake of the foot and mouth outbreak in 1994. Over the last 24 years the Branch has moved from a 1 bedroomed flat to renting a larger premises. We also now have a shop which brings in the majority of our funding, all staffed by volunteers, with 100% of funds raised benefiting our Branch. The branch has gone from strength to strength, so much so we are now looking to move to larger permanent premises.

It costs us £15,000 per year to rent our premises. We have been given the opportunity to purchase a premises next door to where we currently rent so we have put together a project team to work towards securing the funds to do this.

The premises itself is £390,000 but we plan to rent our meeting and training rooms to outside organisations and are looking at other options to raise money to help towards core costs. We have managed to ring fence £65,000 of our own money to go towards this.

We want to create a Samaritans Hwb (Hub) and expand on the work that we currently carry out with another charity Help our Homeless Wales, so helping to give a start to another smaller charity.

Why do we need New Premises?

The duty room is very noisy, callers can hear back ground noise whilst on the phone to our volunteers
Volunteers have to deal with distressing phones calls with alot of background noise and it can be very frustrating and at times upsetting
The duty room is very small, (it sometimes feels that the walls are closing in on us), we are greatly increasing the number of listening volunteers we have, in the last few years we have increased our listening volunteer numbers from 25 to 38 with at least 8 more potential volunteers waiting to join us. We can't turn them away!
With new volunteers being mentored in the duty room, space is small and the noise level is not condusive to giving our callers the service that they deserve.
We have often been told that callers can hear what's going on in the back ground, phones ringing, printer printing, talking (other volunteer on the phone), typing.
We need to add an additional phone line to support more of our callers, which we don't currently have the space to do and would again increase noise levels.
We don't have the space or facilities to enable us to comfortably take on more listening volunteers.
We want to give both new and existing volunteers a greater sense of belonging, allow our volunteers to be themselves and have a better experience of volunteering with us.
We currently have to debrief our calls in the kitchen which is uncomfortable and noisy.
We also have to use the kitchen for talking through and giving feedback to our new volunteers.
The kitchen is shared with shop volunteers so can be quite busy and not private.
We are at risk of losing our volunteers if they begin to feel that they can't give the caller what they need and become frustrated.
We'd like to put on additional listening duties.
We need a quiet room where we can undertake our written word work, emails, SMS and soon Webchat.
In the bad weather we're having to close duties because many volunteers travel many miles to the branch, we currently don't have sleeping facilities.
Sleeping facilities would allow us to open for over night 'hours of need' duties.
All of our training is undertaken off site and reliant on the availability of rooms from an outside source. We need training rooms that are available for us to use, at any time. We have over 80 volunteers who all need to undertake some form of training.
We are a forward thinking branch, we want to increase performance, increase the service that we can offer our callers.
We want to increase our outreach work and increase our public profile.
We need to get ourselves in a position where we can respond quickly and efficiently to the ever changing needs of our callers, and indeed, our volunteers.
Offer our volunteers a better experience.
Samaritans Listening volunteers are giving up their valuable time and energy helping people who are having a difficult time, often changing the course of people's lives, they want to make a difference and to give something back their community.
They manage difficult conversations, some of which can last for 1 to 2 hours and can be distressing and exhausting. We need to make their 'working' environment as comfortable as possible.
We need to ensure that we are inclusive and able to 'accept' all volunteers regardless of any disabilities.
We equip our volunteers with transferrable skills that they're able to take out into their community.

Why Support Us?

By supporting Powys Samaritans you are heping to ensure that there is always a Listening Volunteer there to listen to and support anyone who needs emotional support in times of Distress and Despair.

Surely, a very Worthwhile Cause?

Please , Please Support our Appeal.

Thank You