The Samaritans in Northampton received a grant of £1,000 from the Royal & Select Masters Sesquicentenary Fund which has enabled them to purchase a new Gazebo and ancillary equipment for their outreach programme.

The District Grand Master for the East Midlands District, R. Ill. Comp Martin Wilson received the following letter from the Samaritans

“A big THANK YOU from Northampton Samaritans”

Northampton Samaritans were recently honoured to be selected to receive a generous donation of £1,000 from the Sesquicentenary Appeal Fund of a Masonic Companion Order (Royal & Select Masters). This donation is gratefully received and means we can continue to offer the confidential emotional support service that we have provided locally since 1968.

Last year we responded to over 20,000 phone, email and chat contacts, with almost a quarter of all people reaching out to us expressing suicidal feelings. Our dedicated team of 145 volunteers not only provide our listening service, but also outreach, fundraising, run our charity shop on the Kettering Road, as well as other support and admin activities.

We are very much part of our community, attending local events and giving talks to local groups and organisations to raise the awareness of Samaritans.

Outreach gives us the opportunity to make contact with groups who may be at higher risk of death by suicide. We recently attended Pride Festival and Hollowell Steam Rally and have developed a fun interactive “Listening Ear” to engage the public at events. We are proud of our prison team who support the Listener Scheme at Five Wells Prison in Wellingborough, selecting and training prisoners to act as listening volunteers, who then provide confidential emotional support to their fellow inmates.

We can’t do all of this without financial support. It costs about £120 per day to run our services, that’s £44,000 a year, so your donation will make a real difference to being able to continue doing what we do.

Thank you.