Stoke-on-Trent family moving to volunteer on hospital ship

Amelia and Richard knew they wanted to change their lives dramatically and help other people.

The couple from Stoke-on-Trent, along with their three children, are uprooting their lives to volunteer on a hospital ship off the coast of Africa.

Richard has recently trained as a counsellor, which he said gave them an opportunity that “just seemed to fit really well with our calling, our life and professionally as well”.

The family will be joining the charity Mercy Ships, which operates two vessels deployed to some of the poorest countries in the world to offer free healthcare.

“You can think of Mercy Ships as floating hospitals,” Richard told BBC Radio Stoke.

“They seek to give medical care, life-changing surgery to people of nations that wouldn’t be able to access it normally.”

The family will be joining the ship for 11 months as it docks off the coast of Ghana.

“It’s wonderful partnership,” Richard said. “The countries are always excited when the ships are coming.”

Amelia first found out about the charity when she was a radio producer, hearing about a family who moved across the world to work on the ship outside Sierra Leone.

“It opened my mind that a family like ours, who were not medical, could work for Mercy Ships,” she said.

“I never thought it was possible that someone like us could support that ministry.”