This week we had the pleasure of presenting Barb Galvin from "The Shirley Shuttle" with a cheque for $2,000 to assist them with the wonderful work they do.
Barb is the founder of The Shirley Shuttle, an idea born from Barb's experience in caring for her mother Shirley during her battle with cancer and witnessing the transport difficulties other patients had in attending life-saving treatment.
A few month's after Shirley's passing, Barb read an article in the local newspaper indicating a lack of local public oncology treatment centres and a lack of transport to oncology treatment for transport-challenged outpatients.
So Barb donated $50,000 to the Cancer Council NSW (CCNSW) for the purchase of a mini-bus to take Gosford patients to local oncology appointments.
On March 4 2008 "The Shirley Shuttle" was launched with the service soon extended to include Wyong residents and continues to operate 5 days a week with 4 sedans on the road and is dedicated to "transport-challenged" clients who have no access to transport for their oncology related appointments.
Each vehicle is driven by a volunteer who either have a direct connection to cancer or via family and friends and they are always on the lookout for new drivers. Since 2019 all Shirley Shuttle volunteer drivers have been issued with a SS uniform.
In 2018 Community Transport Central Coast took ownership of "The Shirley Shuttle" from CCNSW and continue to administer the fleet at no cost. Donations such as ours go towards the cost of replacing the vehicles that do so many km's around the coast.
So thank you to all our avid readers and those that love Anne's jars of pickles - your purchases from our trading trolley have been put to good use, and next time you do a wrong bias, don't cringe and think "walk of shame" to the money tin - think what a great thing you did in helping a wonderful local charity.
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| President Desley and Barb Galvin |
