On Saturday, October 5, we held a thank you event for our fabulous mob of Trailmaker Volunteers at the Salmon Lake Centre in Laxey.

In total, 70 trailmakers were recruited for the trail who supported with a range of activities such as cleaning and maintaining the sculptures, helping extend our shop opening hours, supporting at events and lots more besides.

They were an invaluable resource to the Wallabies Gone Wild team, donating over 2,200 hours of their time to help make the trail the success that it was.

The thank you event was an opportunity for both Hospice Isle of Man and Trailmaker Partner SMP Group to show how much their support was appreciated. It was attended by many of the volunteers who signed up to help with a variety of wallaby related activities throughout the duration of the trail.

The evening started with a drinks reception followed by a short presentation from Rebekah Dalrymple, head of marketing, Hospice Isle of Man, followed by Chris Hall, chairman, Hospice Isle of Man and David Hudson, group chief executive officer, SMP Group.

David then presented each trailmaker with a special edition gold wallaby commemorative badge as a gesture of appreciation.

The trailmakers enjoyed a lovely supper before being surprised with a special announcement.

As a further token of our appreciation we had entered each trailmaker into a prize draw to win their very own small wallaby.

Each trailmaker had an allocation of tickets that correlated with the number of hours they had volunteered and one lucky winner was chosen at random to take a wallaby home with them at the end of the evening.

We will now be following up with any trailmakers who were unable to attend the event to make sure that they receive their thanks and commemorative badges.

We would once again like to thank SMP Group for their support as Trailmaker Partner and for making Saturday’s event, as well as the whole trailmaker recruitment process, possible.

Although this event is reaching its end, we always have an exciting range of voluntary roles at Hospice that allow ordinary people to support in extraordinary ways.

For more information visit www.hospice.org.im

by Hospice Isle of Man

www.hospice.org.im

newsdesk@iomnewspapers