Linda Brown Retirement
The Board of directors and charity Trustees of EVA wish to place on record their appreciation of the dedication, hard work and long service of Linda Brown. We firmly believe that the support and training on offer to our valued volunteers - YOU - was the best in Derbyshire, the East Midlands and probably in England.
Erewash has a very high level of volunteering – at one time the highest in Derbyshire and this success can be attributed to the hard work by Linda and the staff at EVA over many years. Linda came to EVA when it was formed in 1998 having served with the Volunteer Bureau located at the side of Community House. She regularly reminded us of the difficult conditions experienced in those early years. When EVA moved into the Parklands premises we had a separate Volunteer Bureau in rented premises on Derby Road near the Job Centre.
I have memories of Linda dancing on the table at an event in the late 1990’s and squeezing both her and Rosemarie into the back of a small Suzuki Jeep for a lift home. When I joined EVA as Chief Executive in 2002 she was and remained a senior staff member until retiring. We faced many challenges along the way including a move out of Long Eaton to Ilkeston for a period before having the funds to purchase and renovate our current premises on Granville Avenue.
Volunteering also went through many changes including changing from a Bureau to a Centre - having to pass regular quality checks to ensure that we remained a nationally accredited Volunteer Centre. Even that accreditation system is undergoing change as I write this.
The board took the opportunity arising from Linda’s retirement and approved a number of new posts and changes in duties that will be implemented when the new staff team is in place. Full details of the staffing teams will be circulated shortly. Our aim is to maintain the current level of services to the clients in Erewash and to provide a full range of quality services to retain our quality accreditation. We will do our best to broker a wide range of volunteering opportunities for Erewash residents. At present our main funding appears safe until next year but there has been no change to the funding of services like befriending which was cut by 50%. We have however seen and used new money for activities to support people during Covid and Linda made her usual valuable contribution recruiting for those tasks.
We wish Linda a very long, happy and healthy retirement after some 36 years in post and I am sure that each of you will also have fond memories to cherish and similar sentiments.
A final thankyou.
Pete Edwards EVA Chair
