Illness no barrier to hard working Whanganui volunteer

Volunteer of the Month is Allan Willis-Croft. Photo / Paul Brooks

Allan Willis-Croft is not a well man, but that hasn't stopped him being a reliable, hard-working volunteer. He is Volunteer of the Month.
Sandra Rickey, manager of Volunteer Whanganui, says Allan started with them on March 17, 2014.

"Since then he has done pages and pages and pages of raffle tickets. He joined our raffle team but he had a difficult mobility issue because of his emphysema and COPD," she says. "But he wanted to do it to get out and help all those organisations."

Before Allan moved to the peaceful, wooded part of Whanganui East alongside Matarawa Stream, Allan lived in Hipango Tce.
"Horizons took away the $10 subsidy to use the hoist, so Allan would come down the hill on his mobility scooter, spend the whole day at Trafalgar Square selling raffle tickets, then he had to ring the van and pay $15 to get home. It was a costly exercise for him."
Not many people pay to volunteer.
"But he didn't want to let the team down and he didn't want to let the organisations down," says Sandra. "The team has always loved him and a lot of the women would fight over working with Allan because he likes to make people laugh."

As Volunteer of the Month he receives a certificate, a volunteer pin and a $40 voucher from Mud Ducks Cafe.

Allan says he loved doing raffle ticket duty.
"You meet all kinds of different people ... and you see some real strange sights at times," he says.

Before Allan started volunteering he was living in Keith St flats and, as he put it, "I was doing nothing!"
He knew Sandra Rickey so he asked her what he could do to make himself useful. And so it began.
Sandra would pick him up and take him home until together, they applied for a mobility scooter for Allan. That gives him a range of 25 kilometres on a full charge, also rough surfaces and hills can reduce that distance.

Allan comes from Taranaki and is a butcher by trade. He has been a slaughterman and done a bit of everything. "Scrub cutting, fencing, shearing sheds, all sorts. It's all been good fun."
He was in NSW, Australia, mainly pruning roses in Dubbo for six years but his health started to pack up so he headed home to New Zealand. First stop was Te Kuiti, where he had children living. He had been married for 20 years.
"From there I stayed with friends in the South Island for a year."

He has a son in Whanganui, which was how he happened to come here.
His volunteering days have ended, with his health forcing him to call it quits.