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Merry Christmas!

On Friday we held our festive Christmas celebration where we ate, danced, created and spread so much joy together. We distributed over 400 presents during the party, too!

None of this would have been possible without the endless support and generosity of the volunteers, staff, local businesses and individuals that have contributed to our Christmas appeal this year. THANK YOU!

We wish you all a merry Christmas and a happy new year!

WE DID IT!

We are thrilled to announce that St. Augustine's Centre walked away with not one but TWO amazing awards from the Community Foundation for Calderdale Community Spirit Awards - Going Above and Beyond During Covid-19 and Volunteer of the Year for our incredible tech guru, Nawroz Lateef.

Thank you to all of those who nominated us and to the judges for recognising our hard work, especially over the pandemic. You can watch Centre Director Sara's poignant acceptance speech here.

We're Hiring:

We have a great, flexible two-day-a-week freelance role up for grabs in partnership with Calderdale Valley of Sanctuary.

We are looking for someone to develop our awareness raising activity with schools and other community / statutory based organisations who want to understand more about people seeking asylum. You can read more about the role & apply here now - applications close Jan 7!

A note from VSI Alliance:

Volunteer for the booster programme & support St Augustine’s at the same time!

With the Omicron storm looming over us in Calderdale, we are pulling out all the stops to get as many people vaccinated and boosted as we can in the next few weeks. But we can’t do this without extra help from our community.

We know we can rely on you to come forward simply because kindness is in our bones. However, in recognition of all the work that goes on in our kind-hearted community in the Calderdale, the local NHS or pharmacy have offered to donate £20 for each volunteer shift worked in some of our vaccination sites to organisations like St Augustine’s.

So if you can spare 4 hours at some point in the next 3 weeks, including between Christmas and New Year, please sign up to help. You’ll not only be helping the NHS, and the wider community to save lives, but also helping support St Augustine’s too. What’s not to love??

When you sign up to shifts through the online system, you can nominate St Augustine’s to receive the £20 donation for your time. This will be donated at the end of the current run of booster clinics direct to them.

The roles and any details such as vaccine type etc will be explained to you by the organiser at the site on arrival, so each shift is timed to start 15 minutes prior to working to allow for a short briefing. But very simply, the roles will be checking patients in with the appointment list, managing the queue and directing people to the right vaccine pod, and then managing safe exit, including giving a leaflet, checking people are okay before leaving etc. No experience needed, but a reasonable level of spoken English is important.

Please go to www.communityresponsecalderdale.org.uk/vaccination-volunteering where you will be able to find available sites and shifts as we get them confirmed.

Thanks very much, and let's hope that together we can keep everyone safe for Christmas and into a brighter new year.

Any questions to either CovidChampions@vsialliance.org.uk or Catherine.Bann@vsialliance.org.uk or phone 07495 049459.