A WOMAN who has committed herself to helping blind people in Cumbria for nearly 30 years, is showing no signs of slowing down.

Marie Scott joined the West Cumbria for the Blind Society in 1993, after retiring as a secretary at Sellafield.

“The company actually didn’t want me to leave, but I wanted to look after my husband," Marie recalled.

“I attended a volunteering week where every firm in the area had stalls up. I decided to join the society and we rented this one, tiny room on Strand Street, Whitehaven.”

After initially failing to secure a grant from the National Lottery, the charity later received £250,000 and relocated to Lowther Street.

Looking back on the last 28 years with the charity, Marie is glad that she has been able to help thousands of people.

The store in Whitehaven offers specialist equipment, as well as an area for people to seek financial benefits, and Marie said that it was ‘non-stop’ in the building.

As well as offering services in-store, Marie helps with the talking newspapers for the blind incentive, where volunteers record themselves reading the local weekly news and send the recordings to blind people around the area.

Starting in 2002, Marie once again demonstrated dedication to helping others by joining the Copeland Talking Newspaper charity as a volunteer while continuing to work voluntarily full-time seven days a week at the Blind Society.

For two evenings each week, Marie puts the local newspaper content on to reading cards to be read and recorded by the volunteers the following evening.

As well as the recordings, the charity reached out to everyone stuck indoors throughout the pandemic to let them know they were being thought of.

Marie said: “I am always in the shop six days a week. Over the pandemic we helped people over the phone, but I thought we could do something a bit special so we sent fruit baskets all through the county. Some people even received boxes of Ferrero Rocher which went down extremely well.”