Their presence at major sporting and social events is taken for granted, but not many of those same event organisers know how close they came to losing the support of the St. John Ambulance Brigade last year.

The number of volunteers at the charity has been steadily declining since 1996 and when they reached a shocking low of 17, drastic action had to be taken to save the charity from closing its Bermuda branch.

They say you never miss something until you no longer have it, and activities in Bermuda would not be the same without the qualified personnel of the St.

John Ambulance Brigade. They give up countless hours a year to support local events, anything from motocross, motorcycle road racing, powerboat and harness racing -- which they attend regularly -- to the major cricket, soccer, road running and concerts.

As the only other organisation on the Island with ambulances, the charity also provides support to the hospital, either with a driver or a vehicle. They are also part of Bermuda's "disaster plan'' in case of disaster.

All that could have been lost when the charity, which has been functioning in Bermuda for more than 60 years -- exact date is not known as important papers were lost with the Hamilton Hotel fire where St. John Ambulance Brigade had an office -- faced an uncertain future last year with a decline in volunteer numbers.

The problem is being addressed and now the charity is actively pursuing the purchase of a fourth ambulance to meet the ever-increasing demand for their services. Already for the month of February there were 25 requests for their presence. Oftentimes the lack of available personnel makes it difficult to respond favourably to all those requests.

With that fourth ambulance, estimated in the region of $66,000, will come added expenses, namely supplies, fuel and personnel.

"It's not just a case of being there as a charity, but having $100 to put fuel in the vehicle, having $200 or $300 to go out and buy new equipment that they would need for that event and on top of that getting the volunteers to be available,'' said Executive Director Susan Parsons who has been with the charity since last March. Mrs. Parsons is the only paid employee of the charity who otherwise rely entirely on volunteers and donations to keep them going.

"We just covered the International Race Weekend and because it was Leukemia and Diabetic patients that were racing, we had to buy specialist medication and equipment,'' she explained. When agreeing to attend an event, the charity lets the sporting organisers know that donations to cover costs would be greatly appreciated. Some respond favourably, others just ignore the requests and continue to make their own.

It is the small matters that are overlooked that concern the volunteers, like expecting them to purchase their own lunch for an all day event or not even bothering to call the charity at all if the event is called off at the last minute. Personnel have had the experience of going to an event and finding nobody there.

"That's a real discourtesy, really, and we might have turned somebody else down,'' said Mrs. Parsons, whose background is nursing and marketing. "People don't realise we have costs associated. Sometimes we are not asking for donations but asking for them to take on the obligation of meeting those costs. If they give $200 they might think they are giving a donation but the event might have cost $300 or $400 to cover, so how do you get that message across?'' Mrs. Parsons says another way of repaying the charity would be for organisations to encourage their members to help out at their annual tag day or even encourage them to become volunteers of St. John.

The charity gets hundreds of requests a year to attend various functions. Each ambulance must have a driver and at least two trained personnel in first aid, probably an EMT and basic recruit. They send a request in and it has to be sent in by e-mail or fax, we don't take anything by phone,'' she explained.

"Then usually they will send a letter and it will mention a donation and if it doesn't I have to be quite assertive when I phone them up. I say `I got your request, this is the procedure, it will go on the clipboard and the volunteers will put their name forward. However I do need to remind you we are a charitable organisation but we do have overhead and costs and your letter doesn't mention donations'.

"Some are very good but there are a lot of names on that clipboard who haven't given anything to St. John for a number of years. These are people whom we cover regularly, but of course we don't want to get into a situation where we say `if you don't ever donate, we won't cover you'.

"There has been some instances in the past where the dilemma is if you haven't got any fuel to put into the vehicle and don't have anybody (volunteer) to offer how do you cover them?'' Some of the biggest events on the St. John calendar are Cup Match and the Ag Show at Botanical Gardens, but they also attend jazz and soca concerts, too.

The fast paced sporting events like motocross, cycling and powerboat racing would not be able to go ahead without their presence.

"We do have to prioritise as well because if we were to get five requests for a weekend and we can't do all five, what we would do is look at the events that are more likely to have an emergency,'' she explained., "For things like scrambling and go-karting, we have to be there. That's the same for powerboating and equestrian events, who have a season and they would send us the schedule for the season.'' Then, being the nature of many Bermudians, there are some groups who leave the importance of securing St. John until the very last minute. "They expect us to just drop everything and turn up and that causes a huge headache,'' Mrs.

Parsons stressed.

"Then you would get a request that says `I need an ambulance and four personnel from 7 a.m. until 7 or 9 at night. What that means is they are turning up at here (St. John headquarters on Point Finger Road) at 6 a.m. to stock the vehicle and check it.

"This is when we would be quite assertive ourselves. `What refreshments will be available'? None. So now we're saying you can't expect a volunteer to go out from six in the morning until 7 or 8 in the evening and the people organising the event haven't thought of what they are going to eat and drink all day. That's been a fairly big issue in the past.

"Then you have new members who turn up to cover an event, the organisers put refreshments on but they are expected to pay alongside the public. So they go as a volunteer, giving up their weekend earning nothing and now it's costing them $24 to eat and drink all day.

"We're trying to find a way around that and I tend to be the person who phones the people up and asks if they can look at lunch tickets and refreshments for the people. Some are great and do it.'' In less than a year with the charity, Mrs. Parsons has had to deal with issues outside the charity and matters within, namely low morale amongst the volunteers.

"Membership was at an all-time low, we had only had 17 active volunteers and to be fair there was a lot of reasons for that...low morale, low motivation,'' she explained.

"There hadn't been any expenditure in terms of the volunteers for a number of years. We had an audit that we had to get through and there were issues that came up from the audit that needed to be changed, ensuring, quite rightly, that public money was being spent in a correct manner.

"We started our new year on September 11 last year and we decided that we were going to rebuild the membership, be a lot more assertive and aggressive in seeking out funding and donations.

"We're going to have a lot more active council and tighter communication between the council and volunteers.'' Mrs. Parsons also promised more productive Monday meetings where a training schedule will be put in place to enable a volunteer to go from basic recruit, to EMT and then ambulance driver.

"They can then pursue a medical career if they want to,'' said Mrs. Harvey who explained that past volunteers have often gone on to get jobs in various capacities at the hospital.

The charity has also make an effort to reach out to the younger members of society and helping guide them into careers. A Badger programme is being launched to teach youngsters vital first-aid skills, something that is catching on fast overseas.

"We haven't had the manpower or funding to push it into the schools, but this is the year we would like to do that,'' Mrs. Parsons revealed.

"If you start with having a very, very good input into the Badger programme, they then become cadets and cadets become adults members.

"When you have somebody who left school and didn't do very well, we can take them and say to them `work hard with St. John and we'll work with you.'' Joan Van Putten, with 22 years' service, is the oldest surviving member of the charity and runs the cadet course.

Added Mrs. Parsons: "The membership has gone up, we're now up to 45. We were up in the mid-80s in 1996 and that was our last really good year. We always used to have a St. John Ball at Government House and the last date that we had that ball was 1996. "When membership shrinks it's harder to do anything. We also haven't had an appeal for raffles in four years either, so this year we will be making a major appeal to run a raffle.'' There are also plans for an open day at the St. John Ambulance Brigade building.

"There are a lot of things people don't know...that they can buy first-aid books here and text books and can sign up for first-aid and CPR courses here,'' explained the Executive Director.

"We now offer Bermuda's first AED De-fibrillation course which was started last week. It's a new project for this new image and we're working with private companies and alongside Government where we can to bring these machines in and put them throughout Bermuda.'' The ambulances also have a new colour, switching just recently from an orange strip to a green one to bring them in line with the St. John colour worldwide.

Volunteers also have green pullovers as part of their uniform.

St. John Ambulance Brigade is the world's oldest charity, originating in Jerusalem 1300 years ago as a monastery to provide medical attention regardless or colour, culture, creed or ability to pay.

That same mission statement is the basis for their existence today. The charity has a presence in 40 countries around the world.

In Lifestyle on Tuesday: The cost of running one of Bermuda's busiest charities.