Residents raise funds for the Air Ambulance Service

A group of residents and colleagues from Alderwood retirement scheme in Coulby Newham have raised £1753 for The Great North Air Ambulance Service (GNAAS) by hosting a coffee morning, bingo, and a raffle.

Since they first began fundraising in August, the team has worked hard raising funds, making everyone locally aware of their charity drive, selling raffle tickets to visitors and family members. 

The fundraising team officially donated the funds raised at a ceremony at Alderwood on Tuesday 20 September. Resident Kath Findlay, along with the scheme’s cleaner Denise Hindmarsh who organised the event, had the honour of presenting Deborah Gibbs from GNAAS with a special cheque for £1753!

Miss Gibbs said:

GNAAS is completely public-funded, and we need to raise over £6.7million per year to survive.

This year marks the service providing 20 years of life-saving care. Throughout this time, they have responded to more than 23,500 times across the region, with road traffic collisions being the most frequent type of incident responded to by the team.

It’s people like you who help keep us flying so thank you so much for your kind donation.

Mrs Findlay said:

We’re so happy we could present the Air Ambulance Service with this money. I just wanted to help out in any way I can, but I can’t believe we managed to raise so much! 

I never thought we’d get to £1000, let alone £1,753! Thank you so much to everyone who has donated and thank you to everyone at Alderwood and the wider community for supporting us.

Denise Hindmarsh, who helped organise the fundraiser with the residents, said:

The Great North Air Ambulance Service does incredible work and I’m overjoyed we’ve managed to raise so much for them.  

Everyone involved has worked really hard for this fundraiser. Even people who weren’t raising money with us were helping out by supporting us Thanks again to everyone who donated.

For more information on Alderwood, please click here.