New volunteers at the Samaritans' Swindon & District branch will soon benefit from additional training equipment thanks to Motorola.

Motorola, based at Groundwell, donated five sets of Talkabout T5532 two-way radios to the Samaritans enabling volunteers to have first hand experience of call situations, throughout their training.

Practice calls allow volunteers to build confidence and equip them with the knowledge and skills to support callers. Using the two-way radios creates a training environment that is as near to real life as possible. Until recently, volunteers sat back-to-back to complete the practice calls as making real phone calls costs money that could be used to fund calls from the public.

Paul Bentley, chairman of Swindon & District Samaritans said: "We have already found that using two-way radios significantly improves the confidence of new volunteers and so the addition of the two-way radios donated by Motorola will make a real difference to our volunteer training programme when it starts in the autumn.

"Having a team of confident, well trained volunteers is essential to be able to deliver the 24/7 confidential listening service and having access to technology like the two-way radios that prepares new volunteers more effectively can only have significant benefits all round."