Wolverhampton Rotary Club donates 22,000 visors in four weeks

The Rotary Club of Wolverhampton has completed a project delivering protective visors to organisations such as the Haven and the Good Shepherd and a number of hospitals and care homes across the city.

Rotary Wolverhampton branch president-elect Richard Green said the donations were part of a district-wide initiative to help protect volunteers and staff battling coronavirus.

He said: "We sourced the visors ourselves from a printers in Cannock called Kazoo Print Solutions, which kept its staff on to produce the visors rather than closing down.

"They made the visors available to us for £1.25 per unit, an opportunity we grabbed with both hands and entered into a partnership with them.

"We then reached out to our contacts across the city and offered the visors for free, for which said they would be delighted to take them."

In the four weeks the project ran after starting on April 14, the club was able to donate 22,000 visors across the city, aided by 30 volunteers.

The volunteers picked up the visors from Kazoo and delivered them to the different services around Wolverhampton, observing social distancing at all times.

Mr Green said the visor project was the first of a series of projects the club was doing to help charity services around Wolverhampton and the surrounding area.

He said: "We are moving on to donating sets of equipment to charity shops to help them re-start after many weeks of being closed.

"The sets will be hand washing stations with small mats designed to keep people two metres apart, as well as notices to let people know they need to stay two metres apart."

Mr Green, who has been a Rotarian since 1997, said: "It's been a great opportunity to give community service in the spirit of Rotary and a prime example of the club in action.

"Our worldwide motto is 'Service above self' and we think we are fulfilling that motto completely through this work, which is wonderful."