We provide First aid at public events to hospices, charities etc. Any public events must have first aid cover and the commercial companies are now charging horrendous amounts, so this charity was born! I founded the charity 4 years ago. I started with just my family and a couple of friends to make up seven trustees. We now have 42 volunteers.
We have a great deal of fun and obviously all the training is free of charge. I supply ambulance shirts, trousers and Hi-vis coats and waistcoats. I also pay for volunteers’ mileage if they attend an event, but I cannot pay mileage for attending training. We expected to attend 12 events in our first full year, and we covered 63! If all the events had taken place, we would have covered 130. We covered 150 events in 2021. I expect we will be covering 200+ in 2022. We have now got two Ambulances and you can be trained as just First Aiders or you may wish to take the training further to include oxygen airway management, administration of drugs etc.
Weekly training takes place at Asda in South Woodham Ferrers on a Monday night 19.30 – 22.00.
New volunteers first aid training consists of four days. I also encourage new volunteers to come out as observers until they complete their training.
Commitment wise, volunteers attend events if and when they want, but we would hope they could do a minimum of six days per year. Although the training is every week many people cannot manage that but what we hope is people to perhaps attend at least two in every four weeks.
I have my own commercial Healthcare Training & Development Services company providing training to the NHS. I therefore provide all the training to the volunteers
For more information, email: Info@ecfaev.org or call: 01268 761840 / 07989 272899
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