Four Manea organisations bag donations thanks to local shoppers

Four village groups have benefited from shoppers who visit the local shop.

Bharat Sisodiya, owner of the One Stop shop in Manea, presented cheques to organisations in the village thanks to cash raised by customers buying the 5p carrier bags.

Manea Community First Responders were awarded £900 from One Stop’s ‘Cash for Carriers’ scheme.

While the village Girl Guides received £850, the pre-school was given £500 and Manea Utd Strikers was presented with £350.

Ben Lavender, Manea first responder, said: "The money will enable us to purchase a new smartphone, which has a community first responder dispatching app on it; this has an automatic download of satellite navigation for each call and this saves us vital minutes in getting on our way to the call.

"It also has GPS tracking linked to the ambulance control centre so they can see exactly where we are, and saves us being stuck in at home when on call.

"There are many other features which are great, this will replace a very basic non smartphone that we use for our second call sign.

"The money will also help us to keep the village community defibrillators serviced and in good working order.

"Four out of the five in the village are charity funded and all replacements and consumables (including the heated yellow cabinets) must come from charitable donations."