Staff at science company with Derbys HQ vote to save lives after naming St John Ambulance their new charity
Hundreds of employees at a chemistry company with a Derbyshire headquarters will be helping save lives after nominating St John Ambulance as their next adopted charity.
Lubrizol, a science company whose research and development function and headquarters is based at Hazelwood near Belper, has now announced that the leading first aid organisation will be its next charity partner over all its UK sites.
The partnership means that Lubrizol’s employees will be undertaking a series of fundraisers aiming to raise thousands of pounds for St John Ambulance over the next two years.
Lubrizol has around 350 staff at its Hazelwood headquarters and hundreds more at a further four sites around the UK.
The company’s support for St John Ambulance comes after its previous two years of fundraising raised a phenomenal £28,282 for mental health charity Mind. The company’s achievement in raising the money was all the more remarkable because staff were forced to undertake many charitable activities on their own because of Covid lockdowns.
Representatives from St John Ambulance joined staff from Lubrizol’s charities and communities committee at a recent charity day, where they told how all money raised would go towards helping save lives.
Eva Szabo, corporate partnership officer for the charity, told employees: “Every single donation that you raise will go towards saving a life. We are really looking forward to going on our fundraising journey together so thank you in advance!”
Eva was joined at the day by Heather Powell, volunteer unit manager at St John Ambulance in Derby.
Heather said: "One of our main aims at St John Ambulance is to make sure that as many people in the community as possible are trained in first aid so anybody can help in an emergency.”
Eva added: “CPR has been in use in some form since 1740 but still to this day not everybody is confident enough to know what to do to help save a life.”
In the UK, more than 30,000 people suffer a cardiac arrest every year. When this happens, every second counts and the key to survival is early chest compressions and early defibrillation.
Without lifesaving intervention the chances of survival start to decrease by about 10 per cent with every passing minute.
Eva said: “We need support from companies like Lubrizol to help us train and equip as many people as possible with the skills needed to help save lives. We don’t want anybody to have any regrets. Every single person has the potential to make a difference in an emergency, and every single donation raised has the potential to save somebody’s life.”
Tom Grazier, co-chair of the communities and charities committee at Lubrizol, said: “I’m delighted that we will be supporting St John Ambulance for the next two years. Our charitable work is very important to us at Lubrizol and we’re really looking forward to working with this fantastic charity in supporting their life-saving work. It’s very powerful to think that the money we raise will be put to good use in saving lives. Every charity we support has been voted on by employees here at Lubrizol and this time St John Ambulance emerged as a clear favourite. We’re very proud to be giving them our support. Staff from around our Lubrizol sites will be getting their thinking caps on and coming up with some great ideas as to how we can raise vital funds for this great cause.”