DROITWICH stroke club is set to close following 35 years of ‘changing people’s lives’ after a last-ditch plea for volunteers failed.
Its chair Christine Bowden and her husband Eric, the club’s minibus driver and treasurer, are both retiring at Christmas, meaning the club needed three new volunteers to replace them.
A campaign was launched to find volunteers in September, led by Christine and Eric and Councillor Richard Morris.
However, very few people have come forward to volunteer, with one woman only able to offer her time if the club moved its 10am Friday meeting slot.
Time has now run out and Christine has been forced to tell the club’s venue Emmanuel Church and Droitwich CVS, which supplies the minibus, the group is unable to continue into the new year.
The club’s final meeting will now be on Friday, December 15, the annual Christmas lunch.
The group has met weekly at Emmanuel Church, offering social activities such as skittles, quizzes and dominoes.
It also offered a cooked lunch, tea and cake and a game of bingo in the afternoon.
Christine told the Standard she and Eric were thinking of retiring last Christmas but members convinced them to keep the stroke club going.
She added it was a sad day but was hopeful the stroke club’s legacy would live on.
Some members have already agreed to continue meeting on their own, while £1,000 of the group’s leftover cash has been donated to St Richard’s Hospice and around £5,000 will go to Droitwich CVS.
Christine said: “It’s such a shame but nobody has come forward and been able to commit and it wasn’t fair to keep people who have been so good to us waiting for an answer.
“We will enjoy our final meeting – it will be sad but we’ve achieved a lot and the leftover money will go to good causes.
“Its lovely members still want to meet up and maybe someday somebody might want to start the stroke club up again, we can only hope.”
