Nokia help St John Ambulance connect with their volunteers

Volunteers of St John Ambulance Berkshire are looking forward to becoming better connected thanks to a generous donation from Farnborough based mobile phone giant Nokia.

The donation of 20 brand new Nokia handsets came about as a result of St John Berkshire volunteer Eddie Chan approaching his employers, Nokia Siemens Networks for their support of his charity work via the company’s ‘Helping Hands’ scheme. The scheme aims to provide support to local charities by offering donations and allowing staff to take time away from work to help out local good causes.

Helping Hands

Eddie, who is employed by Nokia Siemens Networks as a consultant approached the Helping Hands team for a donation after many of the mobile phones issued to St John volunteers began to break down due to old age.

Commissioner Operations for St John Berkshire, Robert Newman explains: ‘Our Senior volunteers are required to make and receive phone calls in order to carry out their role within St John Ambulance and we are keen that this is done at no expense to them personally. We aim to equip all our volunteers with the very best equipment we can; our senior volunteers are supplied with phones which they can then use to contact fellow volunteers and those people who use the first aid services we provide.

'This kind donation from Nokia will allow us to replace the phones which we currently issue which are well over five years old and fairly unreliable and therefore continue to support our volunteers in providing a valuable service to their local communities.’

Helen Forster, Helping Hands Coordinator for Nokia said, ‘As part of the "Nokia Helping Hands" programme we aim to engage with a number of local charities and are pleased to be able to support St John Ambulance by donating a batch of N79 phones. The service provided by St John is very important to society as most people will have a need for first aid at some point in their life.’

Robert Newman continues: ‘This donation shows that there a number of ways in which businesses can support St John Ambulance without having to hand over cash or a cheque. We are able to make use of products such as the phones, services, expertise or simply a few hours of someone’s time. If there are any local companies who can offer us some support we would be delighted to hear from them.’