Dingwall man's 'all or nothing' crowdfunder targets life-saving gear
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A ROSS-SHIRE man has set up an online crowdfunding page to help raise enough money to provide his home town with public access defibrillators.
Andrew Smith (34), who lives in Dingwall with his young family, got the idea to fund- raise whilst on a family holiday in North Berwick.
Mr Smith, a psychology student who also works in car rental, told the Ross-shire Journal: “I noticed there were a number of public access defibrillators in the town.
"As a first-aider myself, I thought it would be fantastic to have similar facilities available in my home town so I set up a crowd-funding page and myself and a small group hope to harness people power online to make this happen.
"Crowdfunding allows the people of Dingwall to get involved in providing this life-saving equipment for their town.”
A defibrillator delivers an electrical current through the chest which aims to shock the heart back into a normal rhythm allowing it to pump again.
The crowd-funding page allows 30 days to achieve the group’s full target of £1,500, otherwise pledges will not be collected.
“It is all or nothing,” explained Mr Smith.
“Our first objective is to fund two public access defibs for Dingwall, but we hope that we will exceed our target and go on to provide a unit for Maryburgh and then Conon Bridge.
"We will do this in partnership with Lucky2BHere who also provide free training in this equipment for any willing volunteers. The nice thing about the automatic external defibrillator is that volunteers can be trained in its use in only two-and-a-half hours.”
He added: “There has been a good response, we’ve got over 180 likes on the Facebook page within the first two days. So as long as people keep sharing and inviting people to like the page I think we’ll do it no problem.”
For more information visit www.facebook.com/defibs4dingwall and www.crowdfunding.justgiving.com/defibs4dingwall
