This week Land Rover will be helping to explore A Day In The Life of British Red Cross emergency response teams across the UK.
Between Monday 30 January – Thursday 2 February, British Red Cross social media manager Jamie Sport, together with a photographer, will travel from South East and up to Norfolk in a Land Rover Defender 110, meeting British Red Cross staff and volunteers, as well as finding out more about the projects they’re involved in.
The journey will be live-tweeted and blogged from the project locations across the UK, sharing volunteers’ stories. Making the most of social media, the trip will be photographed and the images uploaded onto various social media channels, including Facebook and Twitter. This will help give fans and followers a fuller sense of the work that the British Red Cross do around the country and how Land Rover help them to reach even more vulnerable people in the UK.
Day 1: The team will be visiting the Enfield transport warehouse, where supplies are stocked for UK emergencies and talking to volunteers about how they use their vehicles. They will also shadow an emergency response team in London in the event of a callout.
Day 2: The team will visit a Red Cross communications unit and learn first-hand how the high-tech vehicles work and how volunteers coordinate their response during an emergency. The British Red Cross responds to hundreds of UK emergencies every year. Whatever the incident, from major floods and earthquakes to house fires and transport incidents, the British Red Cross works closely with the emergency services and local authorities to support their work.
Day 3: The team will be visiting the Red Cross dial-a-ride project in West Sussex, where volunteers help vulnerable people get to the services they need. The service aims to improve independence, enabling those in need to keep hospital and medical appointments as well as providing freedom of travel for those with mobility problems.
Day 4: The team will be following a ‘home from hospital’ project in Norfolk. The scheme helps patients leave hospital when their medical and nursing needs have been met. The British Red Cross provides them with emotional and practical support for a period of up to six weeks to help ease the transitional period.
Laura Schwab, Marketing Director for Land Rover UK said: “We are constantly looking at ways we can help to support the vital work of the British Red Cross and enabling them to reach even more vulnerable people in the UK.
“It’s great we can help to highlight the essential work that British Red Cross do around the country via social media, whilst using a Land Rover Defender for the journey to do so.”
British Red Cross Director of Fundraising, Mark Astarita, said: “We are really thankful to Land Rover for providing us with transport for this exciting ‘Day in the Life’ project. The team will be able to see at first hand the varied and vital work British Red Cross volunteers do across the regions.”
The collaboration between Land Rover UK and the British Red Cross is part of the major global partnership between Land Rover and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), announced in August 2010. It involves Land Rover supporting national Red Cross societies in 15 countries, with each country adopting a priority programme.
