242 - Anti choking Training vests for St John's Ambulance - March 2026

We received a nomination from a member asking if we could help fund some bespoke training equipment for St John's Ambulance. We are sure most of you will be aware of St John's Ambulance - a nationwide first aid charity. South Yorkshire has a team of volunteers who dedicate a considerable amount of their free time to provide medical support at many events. In addition to this, they also run First Aid sessions to community groups throughout South Yorkshire, including Scouts, Beavers, Cubs, Rainbows, Brownies, Girl Guides, Sea Cadets, schools, after school clubs, holiday clubs, libraries, Women’s Institutes, etc. As you can imagine there is a massive demand for these sessions, which also need to be tailored to be age-appropriate when covering an age range of 4-84! The youngest prove that you are never too young to learn, and are taught how and when to call 999 through stories and a great deal of entertaining audience participation! The older groups are taught life saving skills including how to perform CPR and deal with choking. The St John’s team are extremely creative, making many of the teaching materials and even story books themselves. However, they also need some key specialist training equipment, and asked if we might be able to fund 3 Anti-Choking Training Vests - 2 adult and one child size, costing £468. When we spoke to the member, she explained that the charity's central funding cannot cover these kinds of training equipment for use out in the community, and whilst training could be done without the physical vests, they find that learning is far more effective when participants can actually use this very visual equipment - which will very likely save a life somewhere, sometime in the future. We were pleased to have funds available at present to be able to support this nomination and look forward to being able to share photos of the vests being used to train people in a local community setting. We know there is so much need out there, and we love that thanks to your nominations, we can help individuals and families directly as well as supporting local community and volunteer groups who do such amazing work, but increasingly struggle with funding. We are grateful for the steady stream of nominations that come into us, allowing us to get your £1s out to such varied recipients. Please keep them coming - we always do our best to support whenever we can and to discuss with you how we can help.