Sheldon, Iowa — The Sheldon Community Ambulance Team has been helping the Sheldon Community for almost fifty years, at the drop of a hat SCAT has been there and ready to help out the community.
Unfortunately, COVID-19 has caused some struggles for SCAT, as explained by SCAT Director Kevin Miller.
(as said) “Each year in May, we do hold a SCAT fundraising supper, and unfortunately this year with COVID going around, we were not able to perform that SCAT supper to our community, and therefore we were unable to raise funds this year.”
Those funds are vital for SCAT as they put them towards many different things for the community, and the lack of funds this year really hurts.
(as said) “What we try to fundraise for,” explains Miller, ” are items that are going to benefit the community as a whole, whether it’s equipment, whether it is supplies for our ambulances. This year our main focus was going to be on our third ambulance. Raising money for that, because that is a vital asset to our community, and that is what our plans were to raise funds for this year, but unfortunately we were unable to do that.”
However, there are ways for the community to help SCAT through these troubling times, and Miller goes into how community members can help.
(as said) “We are continuing to follow COVID practices, so we thought the best way to reach out to our community members for support is by sending a letter to local business, we also plan to send a letter out to residents. Just to raise awareness about EMS, raise awareness about the need for volunteers, raise awareness for the need for additional funds, to help support some of the needs that SCAT has financially but also the needs that SCAT has from a staffing standpoint for volunteers.”
Miller says the number of SCAT volunteers has remained fairly steady, but they could use more.
(as said) “SCAT, in my opinion, has remained stable throughout the past few years,” says Miller, “since I have been on in 2015, however, the demand of the ambulance services, the amount of calls that we are getting, is increasing, therefore we are having to staff our second ambulance more, and eventually, we are staffing our third ambulance as well. so the need for volunteers keeps increasing.”
SCAT responds to 45-60 calls in a normal month, but in July alone they responded to about 90.
Miller then explains how residents can donate money to SCAT.
(as said) “They may send checks to the city offices with attention SCAT, we then take that money and we do deposit into an account we have specifically for fundraising so that money is all accounted for, and it is going directly towards the items we need to fundraise for.”
The address for monetary donations to the Sheldon Community Ambulance Team is: SCAT, P.O. Box 276, Sheldon IA 51201.
If you’d like more information on how you can become a SCAT volunteer, you can call SCAT’s Office at 712-631-4779.
