This Saturday afternoon, we will be joined at the club by The East Anglian Air Ambulance as our Champion Charity for the week. They will be here to help raise the profile of the life-saving work that they do to provide a 365-day helicopter emergency medical service covering Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Norfolk and Suffolk. Incredibly, they do not receive any direct Government or National Lottery funding and the £6 million they need to raise every year in order to launch on an average of seven times a day, all comes directly from charity donations.

In the clubhouse, EAAA representatives Dave and Bernie will be available to chat to anyone about the charity’s work and will also have equipment with them to provide demonstrations CPR demonstrations to anyone who is interested finding out how to deliver this emergency treatment. At half time, one of the representatives will be interviewed over the public announcement system to help explain more about the work the charity does, ways that we can support them plus a little about the free courses they run to get as many people qualified and able to know how to react if they encounter someone experiencing a heart attack or cardiac arrest, including how to tell the difference between the two.

Our Champion Charities help our club to deliver its vision and purpose leverage football to help improve physical health and mental wellbeing across everyone in our community and to help make Sudbury a great place to live, work and thrive. Here in the sparsly populated community of villages and rural dwellings, the Air Ambulance is the only way to get to victims of medical emergencies and accidents, so their work is essential. But the more of us who are trained and able to keep these patients alive whilst the helicopters and rapid response vehicles are on their way, the better.

And their livery colour is bright yellow! To find out more about The East Anglian Air Ambulance visit their website at www.eaaa.org.uk

The next Champion Charity event is booked for the 30th of March when the Men’s First Team is due to host St Ives Town, and we will be joined by representative from Diabetes UK who will help us all to gain a better understanding of the variations of this condition and how to help to minimise the risk to us all.

Finally, please be assured that the charities we are working with are here to raise awareness, not to raise money. No one will be asked or expected to make any donations. Thank you.