For the past 30 years we have been creating products to help professionals whose job it is to save lives in their communities. In 2017, we decided that as a business, we wanted to adopt a social commitment policy which would see us create projects that would support the communities we serve.
Consequently, in Autumn 2017 we launched our Social Commitment projects at a Local, National and International level. With a specified fund for these three areas it is our ultimate aim to provide support to projects which we feel will have the biggest positive impact.
LOCAL – Saving Lives In Corwen
Ruth Lee Ltd is based in a factory in the small town of Corwen in North Wales. Our local community is very important to us and therefore we wanted to create projects which would embrace the theme of ‘saving lives’.
To date we have:
- Made a donation to a group of young people in the town for production of a calendar they created for Cancer charity MacMillan.
- Donated money to Awyr Las (Blue Sky) – the North Wales NHS Charity and requested that our £1,000 be donated to cancer services in the area.
- Purchased a defibrillator – this will be located in the centre of town, by the Butchers, and we are working with Welsh Hearts to plan a schedule of training for the local people.
Future projects we would like to work on next include Parent/Carer Paediatric First Aid courses and Water Safety Workshops for young people. We hope that all of these special projects will impact positively on our local community and if even one life is saved locally, we will be very happy.
NATIONAL – Volunteer Heroes
We have always worked closely with emergency rescue teams and understand that many groups are run and operated by volunteers. With this in mind, we settled on a project called ‘Ruth Lee Volunteer Heroes’, which would run on an annual basis and provide financial support up to the value of £5,000.
This project would allow us to support one or several volunteer rescue teams who were invited to submit an application giving us the reasons why their team deserved such support.
Back in November 2017 we opened applications and we were thrilled to receive a high-number of quality applications from teams across the UK. Although many teams put in fantastic applications and were very worthy of the support, one application shone and showed real need and we agreed to donate the entire £5,000 to Central Beacons Mountain Rescue Team.
The Team at Central Beacons is one of the busiest mountain rescue teams in the UK, responding to more than 140 calls in 2017. In November, they suffered a terrible fire at their base, which tore through the building, destroying all of their rescue equipment and 2 of the 3 vehicles. The building was so badly damaged that when cleared, all that was left were the standing walls which need to be bleached with acid before re-building work can commence.
Currently the team is borrowing equipment from nearby teams, using their own cars and mobile phones for operations. For more serious incidents, other mountain rescue teams are having to travel to cover their area to help.
Whilst insurance will cover the re-development of the base, the two written-off vehicles (a Land Rover and the Iveco Control Truck) are both 14 years old so the insurance payment will be minimal and it will cost in excess of £120,000 to replace them. In total, it has been estimated that the team need to raise in the region of £250,000.
We hope our £5,000 donation goes some way to supporting the team to continue their vital work whilst re-building their base.
INTERNATIONAL – Volunteer Heroes
After deliberating on several projects we decided to repeat the framework for National Volunteer Heroes at an international level.
We know the UK rescue community very well but felt sure that internationally there were many worthy recipients of such support. Via our network of world-wide Distributors we therefore publicised the Ruth Lee International Volunteer Heroes project.
Although take up of this project was smaller than our national award, we still received a good number of very worthy applications. It was very difficult choosing just one recipient and so we made the decision to support several rescue teams.
The 2017 International Volunteer Heroes are listed below, with their donation:
- Swift Water Rescue Team Toscana (Italy) – Awarded £1,000 towards the cost of purchasing a new rescue boat for their vital flood relief work. The team provide training and emergency support for the area and are experts in swift water rescue.
- Kham Nikorn Rescue and EMS (Thailand) – Awarded £1,000 towards the cost of refurbishment to a donated Mercedes Sprinter Ambulance. The team here provide EMS and rescue services across North East Thailand.
- Palmerston North Rescue Emergency Support Team (New Zealand) – Awarded £500 towards the cost of purchasing a ‘white-water’ style raft. The team, who are all volunteers, provide support to emergency services within the Manawatu region for: Civil defence emergency management, Light urban search & rescue and flood, swift water or high angle rope rescue emergencies.
- Hutt City Emergency Response Team (New Zealand) – Awarded £500 towards the cost of purchasing PFDs and throw bags for flood rescue work. The volunteer response team provides various services including incident management, general rescue, USAR CAT-1R, flood and storm response and technical swift-water rescue to the city and surrounding region.
- Geraldine Road Crash Response Team (New Zealand) – Donated a Multi-Trauma Manikin to assist with their vehicle extrication training.
- St. John Rescue Corps (Malta) – Donated a Fire House Manikin to the team who provide civil defence rescue and first aid support.
Managing Director at Ruth Lee, Paul McDonnell said,