Sunday & Charity

Well I did not get to do my charity work with the Elderly this weekend much to my disappointment.

I was really looking forward to giving my time and energy to this but unfortunately, the organiser (the London Coordinator) was the worst and I ended up not having an older person to collect!

Just to get you in the loop, some facts about it.

• This was the first time it had been done in our area. (the launch of our group)
  
• We were to take a large number of Elderly people to a tea party on Sunday afternoon
  
• John Lewis (a huge department store) who have made this charity their charity of the year agreed to host the tea party in their dining room.
  
• Because it was so high profile and the launch it would be appearing in quite a lot of press and John Lewis were to provide Hampers for the Elderly.
  

So what happened?

I should have known when I first registered; it was the 19th March a Thursday evening. I was going away for that wedding she called me around 5pm and said “can you come to a meeting tonight for the drivers at 7pm”

It was too short notice. So I declined and said I was going away for the weekend. (We were literally travelling that night!) I actually felt bad about not going but she said that I need not worry she would send me the minutes of the meeting so that was that. No minutes have ever arrived to this day.

The next time she contacted me via email. Was on the 9th April (Luckily I was checking my emails) it was again at 5pm and she said “can you come to a meeting tonight?” lol surely they must know in advance when these meetings are? As luck would have it I was free so I went down there to hear them out.

Despite her last minute behaviour the meeting was nice, we talked about the Elderly we would be looking after, what would be expected of us and she assured us that she had a long list of Elderly that she would send on and we would choose one that lived near us to collect. When we had chosen we were expected to call them on the Monday before the tea party, the Thursday, to remind them and then on the Sunday morning, the old are 75 upwards and sometimes forgetful so if you don’t phone them they might not let you in, this has happened lots of times.
So that was that.

A week went by and she had not sent any list. And then she sent an email to the group with two names on it saying “here are some older people for you to contact any takers?” One lived near me so I said yeah I will take him. But we began to all feel a bit uneasy. Two names and six drivers? That’s not really a tea party is it? I thought she said she had lots of people?

So I called my guy and found out he had been in hospital for over three months!! As the Co-ordinator she should know this and had not passed on his details to me, but I figured that she just found two names on her desk and just emailed them out as she doesn’t really have a proper list.

I went back to her (ccing the whole group) telling them the sad news by then she sent out some other names. We slowly found out (the hard way) that the people who she kept sending us were either ill, in hospital or had sadly passed away.

I couldn’t help but be annoyed. Imagine phoning and upsetting families by asking for someone who had died? There is a lot more to this story including one of the days her saying she wouldn’t be on email and if she called me with names could I send them out? Lol (she gets paid for this job)

But I wont go on and on let me just say that it ended up with me not being able to collect anyone and around two people at this major tea party.
I'm actually wondering how it all went in the end. John Lewis might not have been that impressed at all.

So what should I do?

I don’t have an Elderly person to take care of and also the next two events I'm unable to attend.

Should I just give up? Write to the Charity? Just give finanically from now on? Advice please….