440 mile Samaritan walk

Highland News & Media

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00:00 My name is Chris Thornton, I'm director of the Darlington branch of the Samaritan.

00:04 I'm walking from John O'Groats to Darlington.

00:11 I'm taking about 24 days to do it.

00:15 I've always wanted to do something like this, I'm mad like that.

00:19 But also I wanted to raise some money for our branch

00:23 and I thought this is one of the best ways that I could do it.

00:26 So far we have raised, our fundraising place is £2,700, just over £2,700

00:33 but it's gradually rising still so hopefully I can get over the £3,000 mark by the time I finish the walk.

00:39 Samaritans are all volunteers, stuff by all volunteers like myself and these two ladies here.

00:45 I buy the funds and the Samaritan branch, the Samaritan organisation itself is 24/7, 365 days a year.

00:53 Some branches can do that but some branches like mine and Inverness branch just do part of the week.

00:59 It's mainly because getting the volunteers to sit on the desk.

01:05 With small branches we can only do what we've got time for.

01:09 Basically what we do is we listen to people who are in distress, have different issues in their lives.

01:16 They perhaps can't talk about them with their families or friends

01:22 and they need someone that they can talk to and they don't know and it helps.

01:27 They can open up and talk and we listen.

01:31 We don't advise, we don't point in what we think is the right direction.

01:37 Self-determination is key with us.

01:40 The support I've got from the Inverness Samaritans has been very good.

01:46 They've come out walking with me, listened to my silly stories and they've looked after me.

01:54 It's the first time I've been to John O'Groats and down that coast but it's not the first time in Scotland.

01:59 I was in the Royal Air Force for 29 years and I spent a lot more time at Kenloss and Lossiemouth.

02:05 When I finished training in the Air Force I was sitting listening to some guy I know, a friend of mine

02:11 and he spent an hour in our canteen talking to me and I just sat there listening to him.

02:17 And at the end I said, "Why don't you talk to your mates?"

02:20 He says, "They don't listen like you do, Chris."

02:23 So from that I worked out that I'm possibly a good listener and I then found out about Samaritans.

02:30 I'm Alison, I am the branch director of Inverness Samaritans.

02:35 I'm Sharon and I'm one of the listening volunteers in Inverness Branch.

02:38 We have just under 40 listening volunteers at the moment.

02:43 I think in the main group about 35, 36 are active at any one time, so a smallish branch.

02:48 It's a very, yeah, very supportive, branch supportive each other

02:51 and I think hearing what Chris was saying about Samaritans,

02:54 that there is a great sense of satisfaction in just being there for people and listening

03:00 because sometimes people are in distress, there's a lot of advice, there's a lot of talk going on

03:05 but most of what we do is listen and through the power of people just being able to talk about

03:12 what's going on for them at that point without judgement, without giving them advice,

03:17 can really make it much easier for them to cope with what they're going through

03:21 and hopefully find their own way through whatever difficulty it is.

03:24 There's always a need for more Samaritan volunteers throughout the whole country.

03:28 I mean, you know, there is never a second that the phone isn't being used in Samaritans nationally.

03:34 365 days a year.

03:36 We would like more, we'd love to have more volunteers come join us

03:42 because it will support the service nationally but also, as Chris was saying,

03:47 we are aiming to increase our outreach work a little bit.

03:51 We do some already but we quite like to go to events, to be there,

03:56 partly if people want to come and offload about something

03:59 but partly to raise awareness, to just say we're here so that people may just see us,

04:04 might have a quiet chat and then go home and think,

04:07 "Do you know what, I think I could ring a Samaritan."

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