St Elizabeth Hospice opened its 22nd shop in Harleston on Friday 26th April.
The charity has been overwhelmed by the amount of volunteers who have agreed to work in the shop in The Thoroughfare following an appeal last month. As a result, five of the volunteers officially opened the shop at 10am.
Helen Dawbarn, 61, from Wortwell, said: “I previously volunteered at another charity shop but St Elizabeth Hospice is a local charity that does brilliant work so when the hospice opened a new shop in Harleston, I wanted to get involved and support my local hospice.”
Janet Wigley, 52, from Harleston, said: “I saw St Elizabeth Hospice was opening a new shop in the town so I looked at the Hospice’s website and thought St Elizabeth Hospice is such a worthy cause, I wanted to volunteer my time to support them.”
Jason Rudderham, St Elizabeth Hospice’s Retail Area Manager, said: “We have been delighted with the response from our appeal for shop volunteers; the strength of support from the local community has been amazing.
“We have ten volunteers at the moment, but would love more. The support our volunteers provide is vital, without them we could not continue to provide our services free of charge to local people.”
The charity, which provides care for local people living with a progressive illness in South Norfolk and East Suffolk, is appealing to the local community to donate stock to the new shop.
If you would like to donate your items – such as secondhand clothes, books and bric-a-brac – you can drop them off at the shop in The Thoroughfare, between 9.30am – 4.30pm.
If you would like to find out more about volunteering, please click here
This will be the charity’s 22nd shop and forms part of a retail expansion to generate vital income to help grow local hospice care for local people.
St Elizabeth Hospice recently opened shops in Halesworth, Lowestoft, Great Yarmouth and Bungay and they are well supported by local people. A new shop is planned in Beccles. It has Hospice services across Waveney and Great Yarmouth including at Beccles, Ditchingham and Gorleston.
St Elizabeth Hospice costs £8.7m a year to run and relies on the income generated from its shops as well as fundraising events and donations.