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Fund undergoes many changes
Captain Savage has just retired from the fund’s committee, having first been associated with it from the early 1970s. She says one of the biggest changes to the work of the fund came when the benefit rates were cut in the early 1990s. Applications for help with rent and heating costs escalated. In the early days people approaching the fund received a bag of coal or some wood or blankets.Today the requests are for electric heaters and help with rents and bonds for flats. Captain Savage says the people coming to the fund today have also changed. Now they are much younger, teenagers setting up house. They are also more mobile and change flats and houses more often. She says there were restrictions on the fund and how many times people could get help. "But all applications are considered on merit," she says. Captain Savage first became associated with the fund when she stood in for Major Margaret Love, who managed the Bealey Avenue Samaritan Emergency Lodge. It was then called the Mayor’s Coal and Blanket Fund but when she was appointed as a member in the 1990s she worked with Mayor Vicki Buck who, said Captain Savage, set the fund on its present footing as a charitable trust. "The fund fills a definite role in the city and deals with people in the lower socio-economic area very well," she says. Captain Savage might be retiring from the fund but she will continue with her involvement with the Community Board established by the Pegasus Medical Group.
Beginnings in 1895 |