Air ambulance to visit school

PRIMARY school children in Stranraer will be visited by Scotland’s Charity Air Ambulance’s (SCAA) newest helicopter next week.

The state-of-the-art H145 D3 helicopter will come in to land at St Joseph’s Primary on Tuesday after the school took part in a week long charity challenge to raise funds for the air ambulance by carrying out 145 laps. They ran, walked and swam in their playground, local park and pool, including over hurdles and assault courses.

A total of 62 registered for the challenge with 41 actively fundraising, raising over £78,000 for the charity, St Joseph’s Primary was the only school in the region to make it into the top seven and now the children will be among the first to view the latest generation of life-savers up close.

Commenting ahead of next week’s scheduled visit, event co-organiser Claire Bain said: “We owe a huge thanks to all the children and primary school communities that took part and raised a tremendous £78,552.29 throughout Scotland – support that truly will prove life-saving.

“We will fly our new helicopter as far north as Orkney, out to the western isles and south to our border counties to fulfil our promise to our winners.

“The engagement with primary schools through this challenge has been fantastic and hopefully SCAA can continue to work with pupils across Scotland to raise awareness of our life-saving work.”

SCAA’s new helicopter and crew will be dropping into the school , playing field, weather permitting, between 1.50 pm and 3 pm on Tuesday.