Cry for help: 104-year-old Hebden Bridge charity on brink of collapse

Hebden Bridge and District Old People’s Welfare Committee - which was established in 1918 and is known as The Old People’s Treat - gives pensioners the chance to be taken out to different places by volunteers.

But the organisation is facing a shortage of volunteers.

Their predicament has been described as a “cry for help” by Nick Wilding, the current secretary.

An AGM has been scheduled for Monday (October 10) at 6.30pm at Hebden Bridge Town Hall, and Mr Wilding hopes more people will come forward and offer their support so the charity can continue.

“It is a cry for help, it really is,” he said. “We need more people to come and volunteer.

"All of our previous initiatives have arisen from people coming to meetings and bringing ideas.

“We are in a situation now where there are too few of us trying to do what needs to be done.

"Hopefully, if we do get more people on board, then that will really help us.

“It is an important thing to exist. It is the sort of thing that if it didn’t exist, you would try to invent it, wouldn’t you?”

Mr Wilding has been in his role for nearly 23 years and has overseen, and participated in, many initiatives which have strived to support vulnerable people in Hebden Bridge.

He is hopeful that there will be more inspiring proposals to come.

“Seven years ago we got to the point where it looked like we might just have to come to an end after a similar situation,” he said.

"But we got some new members who had lots of exciting ideas.

“We had the Boxing Day floods in 2015 and that’s when we started on the Memory Makers project. So many people in the district lost so many of their personal photographs - that was very much a cheering-up exercise.

“I don’t want the whole thing to die but that’s why we have got this initiative going and I hope we get more people to come and volunteer.”