BREAKING down in tears, an overwhelmed mum couldn't contain her shock as she was handed a huge food package that will feed her and her two children for a week.

It's just one of many incredible moments made possible by an ever-growing army of British volunteers in the last few days, as they go above and beyond – juggling their own jobs in the process – to help elderly and vulnerable neighbours amid the coronavirus outbreak.

⚠️ Read our coronavirus live blog for the latest news & updates

From a black cab driver offering NHS staff free taxi rides, to a woman helping connect older people with volunteers who will deliver their prescriptions after her friend's son battled the virus himself, thousands upon thousands of people across the country have stepped up to help their communities through Facebook and local WhatsApp groups.

Here six volunteers reveal to the Sun Online how they're going above and beyond to bring some happiness amid the fear.

'I'm offering taxi rides to NHS staff and the elderly for free'

Father-of-three Paul Mitchell, 55, from Westcliff-on-Sea is offering free taxi rides to vulnerable and elderly people, anyone feeling lonely or NHS workers needing to get in to hospital.

He says: "This is serious and the strain it’s going to put on the NHS… it’s terrifying.

That’s what first inspired this idea. Doctors and nurses on the frontline should have a safe space to get to work, that’s the least they deserve.

In black cabs, because we’ve got the partition, we don’t have any contact with the public. You can make that 100 per cent by sealing up any gaps.

There’s all these taxi drivers that are self-employed and don’t have any income any more – it’s completely gone – we may as well try to help and be useful.

I'm just transporting people between hospitals, to shops, whatever is needed.

I’ve been a taxi driver for 32 years, if we can be useful then we might as well send a message out to people to be useful, rather than just moaning about not having any money.

I’ve got a couple of bookings but it’s escalating. This Saturday I’ve got a lady whose brother can’t walk and he needs to get medication.

The whole of London is shut down now, there’s no work at all for us – our income has gone from up in the air to zero. Literally since last week.

I’m like everyone – I’ve got a mortgage. I’ve tried to cut my expenses down each month as much as possible. Then the mortgage holidays have helped.

But we’ll survive. We’ll probably come out in a bit of debt, but everyone's in the same boat."

'A lady broke down in tears when I brought her food'

Father of two and grandad of eight Julian Cobbledick, 64, from south Birmingham is helping people living in temporary housing and homeless people in his area with charity Crisis. He's juggling the work with running his own medical equipment business, as well as working on a new co-operative business.

He says: "In these troubled times, some of the poor self-employed people have had the rug whipped right out from beneath them.

There’s two things I’m doing now with Crisis, I’ve agreed to be a phone friend, offering support over the phone to people that need it.

And then I’m also helping to deliver food packages. I collected seven yesterday – of around 40 overall – my car sat down and begged! It was overloaded.

It was everything you would want, everything from toilet rolls to veggies, and washing powder. It was a full household grocery shop.

There was one lady who had a couple of young children with her, and her English was poor.

I staggered to the door with this heavy parcel, and when she saw it she actually did break down in tears. She said, ‘no English, but wonderful, wonderful’.

If the plight of being homeless and having to live in hostels wasn’t bad enough, this whole thing now of self-isolating has just doubled the perils these poor people face.

I’m convinced the number of people facing destitution and needing our help now will rise exponentially."

'We've connected an older blind lady with someone to get her food'

Independent consultant Heather Hamilton, 46, is one of a small team of local volunteers that helped set up a Facebook group and website in the Nunhead and Peckham area of London called Nunhead Knocks, in between her day to day work. 

She says: “We wanted to find a way to help the people in our neighbourhood… There’s seven of us organising this and we’re all dedicating 12-14 hours of our day to making it a success.

We now have over 1,300 volunteers signed up on the website and 80 help requests.

Some people are helping with dog walking, grocery deliveries, picking up takeaways, picking up prescriptions.

We helped connect a woman who’s over 65 and blind with a volunteer who’s helping her get meals from now on.

This stuff makes all of us cry every day.

We also connected a family of five who were self-isolating. They were running out of food so a volunteer helped them out with a one-off top-up shop.

Tap to see where COVID-19 is near you

We connected an oncologist whose local tube station had closed and they needed to borrow a car to get to work, to someone who loaned them a car!

Then there was a woman who told us she had no children or friends, so felt really alone. She was self-isolating and a volunteer is now chatting to her regularly.

Then we’ve also connected a local pharmacy that were being overwhelmed with their deliveries to volunteers to help them, and we have some professionals like therapists who can be assigned to vulnerable people.

We connected an oncologist whose local tube station had closed, and they needed to borrow a car to get to work, to someone who loaned them a car!

We’re all terrified, everybody is really afraid and uncertain, so if we can do something to help, it makes us feel like we have power. It’s been a way of coping with the fear for me.

Personally when I’m going out I’m wearing a face mask and gloves, using tonnes of hand sanitiser, spraying groceries with alcohol.

My husband gets bronchitis a lot so it’s not worth the risk.

If I’m willing to risk it and go to the grocery store myself, then it’s worth going for a lady that only has two cans of soup left in her cupboard – which we have seen.”

'I felt like I should do something as an able-bodied young person'

Abbie Wise, 20, is studying Spanish at Newcastle University. She was on a year abroad in Barcelona but she decided to fly back to Lymington in Hampshire as the pandemic worsened in Spain. Unable to return to her studies, she’s started volunteering with the FareShare warehouse in Southampton.

FareShare is a food redistribution charity with 25 warehouses across the UK. During the coronavirus crisis it is urgently calling for more volunteers to sort, pack and deliver food to frontline charities getting vital food supplies to vulnerable people.

She says: “I’ve never really thought about volunteering before, but I’ve had to come home and now I don’t have a lot to do, so I thought I’d go and see what it’s about.

I was living in Spain – the situation is so much worse there than it is here, so I thought I’d come home for refuge.

I flew back to London first and then my mum lives in Lymington near Southampton, which is where I am now.

I’ve not got anything to do now at all, no online work or anything.

I was going to apply for work in a supermarket, but my dad lives in the north of Scotland and we were thinking of going to spend some time up there as well, so I wouldn’t actually be here for that long – no more than a month and a half.

I felt like I should do something as an able-bodied young person who, even if they got the virus, wouldn’t suffer too badly (fingers crossed).

I just thought I probably ought to do something useful for society.

That’s why I joined FareShare. I think it’s just a terrifying idea that some families won’t be able to get food, particularly now compared to other times, because supermarkets are short on stock.

People are either too scared or too vulnerable to leave their houses, so I think it’s really worthwhile to make sure that everyone gets fed while this is going on.

'Fraudsters are robbing elderly of their money – I wanted to help'

Pleasant Craigie, late-40s, is an operations manager based in London. Pleasant has been volunteering with Age UK for years. She previously worked as a befriender with the Hammersmith and Fulham branch, but got back in touch with the charity to help out however she can during the coronavirus outbreak.

She says: "What became really apparent to me with the person I used to befriend was her loneliness. One time we took a taxi to visit her partner’s grave that she hadn’t been to in ages. I was just willing to do whatever.

Sometimes I’d go to hospital with her. It really was acting as a friend.

She recently had to go into a care home and unfortunately I haven’t been able to see her.

One day on Facebook, I saw a post about how fraudsters were taking money from elderly people, pretending to go shopping.

I was like, ‘This is outrageous!’ I then thought, ‘Hang on, I’m already with Age UK and I’m not designated to anybody – let’s get in touch and see what I can do’.

I expect to be going shopping and I’ll leave items and then someone can open the door when I’m a safe distance away. I’ll probably also be making some phone calls.

CORONAVIRUS CRISIS – STAY IN THE KNOW

Don't miss the latest news and figures – and essential advice for you and your family.

To receive The Sun's Coronavirus newsletter in your inbox every tea time, sign up here.

To follow us on Facebook, simply 'Like' our Coronavirus page.

Get Britain's best-selling newspaper delivered to your smartphone or tablet each day – find out more.

And just with my experience previously, even if I can’t come in and have a chat with somebody, I imagine for somebody stuck at home, even just opening the door and seeing somebody, even if they’re two metres away, and saying hello, will make a difference. It’s contact.

The person I used to look after was too frightened to go to a park by herself after having a fall. Going with her, and just letting her be able to sit in the sun, can really make a difference in life.

I grew up in London in the 1980s when bombs were going off. I’m not denying that something bad could happen to me for volunteering now, but I don’t want to hide. I don’t want to deny life after something frightening’s happened because otherwise I’d do nothing.

I know that my life will be better for making somebody else’s life a little less hard."

'We helped a man with dementia living alone get his vital prescriptions'

Bryony Doughty, 37, from Higham Ferrers in Northamptonshire is head of marketing at charity Mercy Ships UK, but is now juggling her work with setting up a Facebook group in her area to organise food and prescription deliveries.

She says: "I came up with the idea when they first began talking about self isolating a couple of weeks ago.

I put something on the town Facebook page, just saying if anyone needed a hand with shopping to give me a shout.

It had around 200 likes and loads of comments in lass than an hour. I quickly set up a separate group and now we’ve got over 900 members.

About a week after this, I had to go into isolation for seven days because there was a case of coronavirus in the office.

I’ve been working remotely and working on this group, with the help of my partner Andrew.

I’m juggling the volunteer requests as and when, as some are obviously quite urgent – especially things like picking up prescriptions.

It’s been really humbling and inspiring to see so many people wanting to help. There’s lots of negative things on social media about stockpiling, but I’ve seen the opposite.

We got contacted by a lady who lives quite far away, on the other side of the country. She was very worried about her brother who has dementia and lives on his own.

He also had a stroke a few months ago so relies heavily on other people.

Due to different circumstances, he now has no support whatsoever. So we’ve arranged for two volunteers to go round get some shopping to leave on his doorstep. Then his sister will contact him to let him know it’s there.”

Bryony also works with volunteer Luisa Mattei, 37, from Rushden, who is a medical sales rep, juggling organising prescription deliveries with her daily work.

She says: “One of my friend’s sons came back from France skiing recently and he had it [coronavirus] last week.

Luckily he’s been completely isolated in their home, but she had to call 111 at the weekend because he could barely breathe. He’s only 25.

He is now fine, but it makes you realise how much people need your help when you hear a story close to home.

I’ve dropped posters off to all the local pharmacies with my number on, because although we have a Facebook group and email, a lot of people over 70 don’t necessarily have the internet.

The people that have phoned have all been in a real panic about being able to get their regular medication.

I just get their name and address, as well as their phone number, before sending it across to Bryony who finds a volunteer who is nearby and can deliver it for them.

The first lady that phoned me has no one local to help her. Her neighbours are elderly as well, it must be really hard to live in an area where you don’t have support. It makes me realise how lucky I am to have family close by.”

Source: Read Full Article