For over fifty years our volunteers have been visiting and befriending lonely, elderly, residents in our Borough, and all of us - volunteers, staff, and trustees - are delighted at our recent receipt of The King's Award for Voluntary Service.

Many residents are familiar with our Rainbow Cafe in The Square, Camberley, which is open to, and the venue for some of our regular events, but not so many will know of our devoted team of volunteers who do around 50 visits a week to our isolated and lonely elderly in Surrey Heath.

Some volunteers develop firm friendships with their 'befriendees', and we at SHAC are delighted to have always been able to provide this service to our clients entirely free of charge, thanks to bequests from the families of former clients, grant providers, Surrey Heath Borough Council, donors, all of you who've supported our events.

All of us at SHAC, not least our volunteers, (who number over 100), and of course our befriendees, will be devasted if this Appeal fails to raise sufficient funds, so it is not an overstatement to say that the future of this long-standing local charity which provides services by local people for local people is in your hands.

We do not just do befriending we also have our Rainbow Cafe (community cafe), a weekly agility class, weekly tea & memories event, weekly men's breakfast club, monthly fish & chip lunch, and various other events during the year.

This charity runs with 5 part-time members of staff and I can tell you as the charity manager we don't just do our P/T we do so much more! And it is because we LOVE WHAT WE DO, and know how much this means to the people we help.

Winning the "Kings Award For Voluntary Service" just proves our services are recognised, supported, and needed. There are 90,000 residents in the borough of Surrey Heath if each of us gave £1.00 to this appeal we would be able to raise £90,000 which would keep this much needed charity going for one year!!!