The Scottish Centre for Personal Safety based in the Barony St John Centre in Ardrossan has managed to secure funding for a Multi-Person Vehicle to aid their charity activities.

The charity needed an MPV to transport their volunteer instructors to various venues both locally and nationally and to transport clients to their centre.

The successful funding applications came from The Robertson Trust, The Ayrshire Community Trust’s Community Fund and the Arnold Clark Community Fund with a generous donation from Collin Care Ltd and the biggest amount from The People’s Postcode Trust.

The MPV can accommodate eight volunteers and has the additional benefits of deeply tinted passenger windows which helps the charity’s light-sensitive, vision impaired volunteers as well as maintaining the anonymity of any female victims of violence being transported to the centre.

The vehicle also has automatically opening doors so blind people do not have to search for the door handle and, as well as all of the volunteers, the internal space can accommodate a guide dog or two.

Charity founder Alan Bell said: “This vehicle is ideal for helping our charity get back on it’s feet again after the Coronarvirus lockdowns. We have already seen the benefit of it as we have run Personal Safety courses in Roystonhill in Glasgow and we are about to start courses in Auchenharvie Academy. Many thanks to the funders who made this possible.”

Crawford Collins, the Director of Collin Care Ltd, which owns several nurseries in the are,a added; “Treetops Too nursery in Saltcoats were delighted to get involved as this is such a worthwhile local charity. We are involved with so many local families that we feel it’s important to give back to the community where we can. This has never been more apparent than during the current times we are all living through.”