Melton CFR Group celebrate huge fundraising boost thanks to the National Lottery

Local community group, Melton Community First Responders is today celebrating after being awarded £10,000 in National Lottery funding to support its work across the Melton Borough. The group will use the money to put towards the total cost for replacement defibrillators for their on-call responders.

Melton Community First Responders group has been running since 2004 and are trained volunteers who are trained to respond to emergency calls alongside East Midlands Ambulance Service (EMAS).

The group attend a variety of calls alongside EMAS including cardiac arrests, seizures and falls within the community with the group’s volunteers responding to emergencies in their own vehicles with kit funded by the group.  

The new funding from The National Lottery Community Fund, which distributes money raised by National Lottery players for good causes and is the largest community funder in the UK, will be a great contribution to the total of just over £18,000 required to replace the defibs carried by volunteers.

Melton Community First Responders are celebrating a huge boost to their fundraising target.

Group Co-Ordinator Ina Scott said: “We’re delighted that The National Lottery Community Fund has contributed this money to our group, and in turn to the community we serve, this will go a massive way towards helping achieve our target.”

“Combined with our fantastic local donations and some planned fundraising, this additional boost brings us another step closer to our target.”

The National Lottery Community Fund recently launched its strategy, ‘It starts with community’, which will underpin its efforts to distribute at least £4 billion of National Lottery funding by 2030. 

As part of this, the funder has four key missions, which are to support communities to come together, be environmentally sustainable, help children and young people thrive and enable people to live healthier lives.

Chairman Jonny McGrady added: “As a not for profit group fundraising is vital to keep us responding in our community. We’re in a position where we need to fundraise to replace all of our defibs on top of our normal running costs. We need to keep funds coming in on top of this project to train future responders and replace other equipment. We’d like to thank The National Lottery and their players for helping us towards our target."

National Lottery players raise over £30 million a week for good causes across the UK. Thanks to them, last year (2023/24) The National Lottery Community Fund awarded over half a billion pounds (£686.3 million) of life-changing funding to communities across the UK, supporting over 13,700  projects to turn their great ideas into reality. 

To find out more visit www.TNLCommunityFund.org.uk