During our store collection before Christmas at Tesco Express in Ryde, we presented the store with a certificate of thanks.  Since they have had our yellow textile banks in their car park, they have raised over £30,000! So thank you to everyone who uses them and please carry on or start to use them.  People always ask us what happens to the items that go into the banks. Well 75% of what goes in are sold in second hand fair markets around the world. 24% is recycled and the last 1% is now being turned into fuel for cemen workst. So nothing goes to waste. Bagitup is the company which does all the hard work and give us 30% of the gross. In some county’s councils we received a recycling credit and that all comes to the charity. 

So once again thank you for your textiles and your support

Rosemarie

Thanks to the staff from the Co-operative supermarket in Ryde for dressing up for the day to raise funds for HAmpshire and Isle of Wight Air Ambulance. They managed to raise a fantastsic £529.29 and they asked me to come along to the store to receive the money. I believe from what I heard they all had a great day. However, the following day the medical dress up was finished and they had to go back to their own uniform.  Thanks to them all for support.

Rosemarie

We have recently had to remove a few of our textile banks at Sainsbury's sites in Hampshire.  Sainsbury's have made the decision to work exclusively with Oxfam for textile recycling at their stores. We have only been allowed to keep our banks where we are charity of the year or have previously been charity of the year at the manager's discretion, so we still have a number of sites across Hampshire and the Isle of Wight.

With your help, we will continue to work towards being nominated again at the stores we have lost, new stores, and existing stores. Meanwhile, it may help our case if any of you would be happy to make a call to your local Sainsbury's stating that you are a supporter of HIOWAA and ask where the clothing bank has gone from the car park? 

The banks that have been removed are from:-

• Sainsburys Wallington Fareham

• Sainsburys Commercial Road Portsmouth

• Sainsburys Farlington

• Sainsburys Tadley Basingstoke

Thanks so much for your support.

Helen Walker. Bag It Up Ltd

South Central Ambulance Service (SCAS) is launching a campaign this week in a bid to stop people calling 999 for non-life threatening reasons.  With the service receiving 1,235 hoax calls and many more inappropriate calls from January 2011 to October 2011, this is an increasing problem that is putting people’s lives at risk.  

In a concerted effort to address this issue, SCAS is headlining the campaign with a hard-hitting video shot in the style of a movie trailer, which showcases interviews with paramedics, real life emergencies and re-enactments of inappropriate calls and the impact they have.  The video is available to view on www.999southcentral.co.uk  as well as on YouTube.   

For further information on the campaign, please contact Gill Hodgetts, Head of Communications and Public Relations, SCAS (tel: 01869 365097, email: gillian.hodgetts@scas.nhs.uk).

Hampshire and Isle of Wight Air Ambulance want to say a huge thank you to Graham Warner at the Locksheath Centre and all the residents who use the shopping centre who have helped them raise a massive £16,000 through hosting two clothing recycling banks in the car park.

The Shopping Centre in the Warsash area has hosted the textile banks for over four years. Local residents have helped to ensure its success by regularly donating their unwanted clothing, shoes and textiles - Thank you very much.

Danielle Mugridge.  Bag It Ip Ltd

At a recent Christmas craft and gift fair held at Braishfield Social Club the idea hit me that it would nice to hold an event such as this to raise funds for the Hampshire and Isle of Wight Air Ambulance.    

I am looking for people to have a stall at the event, whether it is crafts, children’s activities (face painting etc), food, books, toys, gifts or anything similar we would like to hear from you.    I have managed to book the Braishfield Village Hall for Sunday 26th February 2012 from 11am to 3pm. There will be a fee of £10 for having a stall at the event and a request of 5% of sales taken on the day. All these monies will go directly to the charity. Access to the hall will be from 10am and the hall needs to be cleared by 4pm. I hope that you will consider taking part in this event, and I look forward to hearing from you in the very near future.  

If you would like a stall please contact us at enquiries@hiow-airambulance.org.uk or on 02380 33 33 77

Very kind regards. 

Wendy Jeffery,   Volunteer for Hampshire and Isle of Wight Air Ambulance.

If you had any doubts (just like me!) that I wouldn't complete the 'run' then you only have to look at the photograph,  no one would voluntarily dress up to look like that!

 It may have taken me 47 minutes to cover the three miles, but at least I eventually completed it. (At this point I would like to thank The Rolling Stones, as without their music pumping in my ears from an ancient MP3 player, I'd probably still be wobbling around Lasham Airfield).

Seriously though, I would like to say thank you so very much indeed to everyone who kindly sponsored me. Initially, I'd hoped to raise £100 for HIOWAA, and to now see the final total (including Gift Aid) at the marvellous figure of £500.00 is just incredible, a million thanks to you all. and best wishes for 2012. 

Many thanks also to Pam and Joyce, who very kindly came down to Lasham to run the HIOWAA merchandise stand on New Year’s Day, it really was appreciated.  Many, many, thanks and best wishes to everyone for 2012.

June

On behalf of all the staff and volunteers at Hampshire and Isle of Wight Air Ambulabnce I should like to wish all our friends and supporters a very happy Christmas and a peaceful and prosperous New Year.  We all look forward to seeing you in 2012, when there will be a great many exciting events for HIOWAA.

John Perry.

It may be the festive season but it is always ‘the season’ to donate those unwanted bras!

Ysanne Legg from Alresford, one of our most avid bra collectors, has now collected the fantastic amount of 3000 bras.

Amoena, a specialist bra company based in Eastleigh - http://www.amoena.com/uk - who have already donated the marvellous amount of over 700 bras,  have recently donated another six large boxes of bras.

Hogg Robinson Worldwide continue to collect bras and have just added another 2 large bagful’s to their ever increasing total. 

Pampered Passions (USA) – are hopping to ship out their first batch of customer’s bras to the UK very shortly. http://www.pamperedpassions.com

Many, many thanks to all of the above, and to everyone else who has donated bras this year, it really is greatly appreciated.

BAG-A-BRA DAY 2012 will be on Thursday 24th May

Dick Whittington(June) and the cat (volunteer  Joyce Crawley) ran a ‘themed' HIOWAA  fundraising stand at the recent BVS Christmas Fair -along with a number of other charities - in The Malls, Basingstoke. As you can see Joyce was definitely not a ‘cat - astrophe’!  We would like to attend more Christmas Fairs in December 2012, so if you could kindly advise of any events in your area, that really would be greatly appreciated. Many thanks.

June

A busy day was had by four of our volunteers on 2nd December manning the Charity Card Shop in the 'eighteen17' Cafe located in the Guildhall Winchester. David, Jane, Joyce, Pam and Sarah did a sterling job of managing the queues which started at 9.30am and replenishing the shelves of christmas cards for over 40 Charities as part of an initiative led by Winchester Charity Cards and supported by the Mayor of Winchester; as we are his chosen charity of the year.

 The HIOWAA team achieved over £2200 worth of sales of card on the day, for all the charities taking part, with all HIOWAA stock selling out by early afternoon requiring June to make a mad dash with another delivery of cards for the Saturday rush.

 We will let you know in due course how much we raised for our charity over the weeks the card shop was open. But, don't forget to pop into the Card Shop which is open 9.30am to 4.30pm Monday to Saturday when you are next in Winchester to stock up on our festive 'Red Robin' and 'Helicopter in the Snow' cards.

Sarah Rowlands

Hampshire and Isle of Wight Air Ambulance is thrilled to announce that we have been successful in winning one of the three grants of over £6,000 from NatWest Bank,  in the NatWest Community Force 2011 vote.

Chief Executive of Hampshire and Isle of Wight Air Ambulance, John Perry said. ‘This vital service benefits the entire community, and winning this award makes a considerable difference to the sums we must raise each month to keep the Air Ambulance flying and saving lives.    We are enormously grateful to all our supporters who voted for us, because without their support we would not have been in the top three charities to be given this award.   Our thanks go to NatWest for their generosity in creating this opportunity.’