Serve your community: Volunteer for Hato Hone St John

Te Awamutu St John Opportunity Shop volunteers, from left: Gael Corboy, Dot Neill, Malcolm Kemp, Sally Eathorne, Christopher Johnpillai. Photo / Dean Taylor

If recent years are any indication of our future, with a global pandemic, extreme weather events and natural disasters all impacting our lives, now is the time we must all look at our preparedness ‘just in case’ and, if we are able, look to where we can be the most help.

If seeing people in need - such as those worst affected by Cyclone Gabrielle - makes you feel like you want to help but you don’t know how, Hato Hone St John has the answer.

St John is not just about an ambulance service and being a paramedic. St John provides a range of vital services in our communities, much of them through the valued contribution of volunteers.

Volunteering for St John is one of the most rewarding things you can do - working to improve the health and wellbeing of your community, and beyond.

Volunteers make up about 70 per cent of the St John workforce - that’s a team of 8000 volunteers supporting our communities, which you can be part of.

If you want to make a difference for others, St John has a role for you. These include:

• Area committee members - assisting with fundraising, building maintenance, volunteer welfare, developing and growing health and wellbeing connections and programmes in our community, volunteer educators, public speakers;
• Retail store volunteers;
• Caring Callers;
• Youth leaders;
• Hospital helpers;
• Volunteer Operational Ambulance Officer/event health services;
• Major Incident Support Team (Mist).

The beauty of being a St John volunteer is in the range of services, meaning everyone has a skill that can be useful – it isn’t all about driving an ambulance and giving medical assistance, although that is a major part of the work and volunteers are needed for those roles and to be part of the Major Incident Support Team.

Operational Ambulance Officer volunteers play a vital role in the organisation. It is a demanding but rewarding role and offers training, variety and opportunities for growth.

Similarly, being part of the Major Incident Support Team is a frontline specialist role, but requires less time commitment.

The Major Incident Support Team provides support for first responders at both planned and unplanned major events/incidents in times of crisis and high workload.

There are multiple requirements to be a volunteer in one of these two roles. The first port of call should be to check out the volunteering tab at join.stjohn.org.nz.

Being an area committee member is a great way to support and help your community.

The range of roles, and therefore skills required, make it challenging and rewarding.

It is also a vital role for the overall wellbeing of St John in our district.

Te Awamutu has one of a number of St John retail stores around New Zealand which raise funds to support local programmes and life-saving equipment and services.

Each store has a number of roles, from logistics and stock management to display and retail – roles that require skills many people have developed during their working lives.

Caring Caller is a service that St John provides for people who live alone or feel a bit lonely.

Volunteers are needed to phone clients regularly to check that everything is okay.

Emergency departments are busy places where information and support are just as important as treatment.

It can be stressful for patients and family members. This is where being a Friend of the Emergency Department means you can make a difference - you’ll provide comfort, reassurance and help to patients and their families, becoming an important part of a hospital’s emergency department.

An FED is one of the hospital roles St John volunteers undertake.

Youth leaders play a vital role in developing the future of St John – nurturing young people to become valuable future staff or volunteers.

It is a rewarding role that comes with training and growth opportunities.

If any of these volunteering roles appeal to you, use the join.stjohn.org.nz website to start an enquiry.