Tuesday 14 April 2009

Dorset Flag Group donates £1000 to Air Ambulance Service

The group who promoted the winning entry in last year’s competition to find a Dorset flag has donated £1000 to the Dorset and Somerset Air Ambulance Service.

The Dorset Flag Group which includes Jacquie Hall, Town Crier of Wareham, Chris Brown, Town Crier of Wimborne and Dorset flag designer Dave White were given a tour of the facilities located at Henstridge Airfield in Somerset and saw the Air Ambulance crew in action as a call came in during the presentation.

Tracy Bartram - fundraising coordinator for the Dorset and Somerset Air Ambulance was delighted to receive the cheque for £1000, stating ’It’s amazing how the public support us in so many different ways. Having a flag for Dorset is fantastic. The fact that money raised from selling the flag is helping the air ambulance continue to fly is even better. We need to raise in excess of £1.2m a year, and this goes to show that people can help us by raising funds in so many different ways.'

Funds had been raised from the sale of the groups winning flag entry ‘St Wite’s Cross’ during last years campaign to see Dorset’s first ever county-wide flag elected. A previous £500 had been donated to Wimborne Minster’s Priest House in November 2008.

Dave White stated “We’d always intended to give surplus funds from the campaign back to local charities and the Air Ambulance Service seems a highly appropriate one, given that it is entirely funded by donation."

The group left behind flags, stickers and badges to pass around the crew, noting that the helicopter and the flag matched somewhat.