LEADING citizens are putting together the final touches on a project to provide a badly-need safety net for residents who need support in the Tavistock area, it has emerged.

The idea springs from the highly-successful Christmas Treats campaign which saw volunteers deliver festive goodies to families and individuals battered by the financial fall-out of the Covid-19 pandemic emergency which struck nearly two years ago.

Now, organisers of the Christmas Treats initiative are working on a scheme – dubbed the Tavi Task Force - which will provide help to residents in the Tavistock area throughout the year.

The aim is to call on the services of a vast army of volunteers who answered the call to help out during the last two Christmases and who have made it clear they want to take part in further missions to help their less well-off fellow residents. §One of the organisers, Dr Geri Parlby, who has links with several charitable groups in the area, said they are looking at creating a volunteer database via social media which they can call on when needed.

She said the original Christmas Treats campaign for elderly, created after the cancellation of the yearly Tavistock Rotary-backed festive lunch because of Covid-19 restrictions, had uncovered social problems within the community.

Dr Parlby said: ‘The original Christmas Treats idea was aimed at elderly and isolated people whose lunch was cancelled, so it was decided to deliver food and gifts to their door. During last year’s exercise, which we did in collaboration with Judy Hirst from Tavistock Rotary Club, we found there were so many social problems in the area we felt we had to do something about it on a more permanent basis.

‘I know it’s been in the mind of another of the organisers, Graham Parker, to set up this kind of project for some time, because he couldn’t believe what we were finding in a supposedly affluent area.

‘Because people in the Tavistock community are fantastic, they volunteered in their droves for Christmas Treats and we had to turn some of them away in the end, because we actually had too many for what we needed to do then.

‘What we want to do is to tap into that amazing spirit and that willingness to volunteer by creating a database we can use on such platforms as WhatsApp so we can contact people quickly to ask for help with any particular job that needs doing.

‘To make it clear, we are not replacing well-established groups like Rotary or the Lions, who already do a great job in our community, but we are adding an extra place where people who need help can go to.’

Dr Parlby said they were contacting other organisations to work with the scheme’s organisers, but had not yet finalised final details on how it would work.

Some 15 potential volunteers have already made themselves available after becoming aware of the new project.

The campaign was originally organised by Tavistock Locals Help when the traditional Rotary Christmas lunch at the United Reform Church was shelved because of Covid-19 restrictions.

Organised mobilised their army of volunteers through an appeal and were set to cover just Tavistock, but later extended it to villages in the area of the town after it became clear that more people needed help than they had at first thought.

Volunteers took gifts and food to families and individuals who had been bit by the financial carnage caused by the pandemic on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Boxing Day.

Last Christmas, the Rotary lunch was back on, but volunteers, knowing people are still facing hardship, have continued the Treats campaign, although on a slightly scaled down basis.