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Freewheelers Emergency Voluntary Service is a registered charity that provides a free out-of-hours motorcycle courier service to hospitals in the South West of England.
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Our service is available to hospitals and other NHS institutions between 19:00 and 07:00 Mon-Fri and 24hrs weekend & Bank holidays Emergency co-ordinator - 0300 800 1907 |
Riding For Life: A registered charity (no. 1001067) founded in 1990, Freewheelers EVS has a coverage area that includes Somerset, Bristol, Bath, West Wiltshire, and South Gloucestershire. Freewheelers is one of a number of groups that cover different parts of the country.
Our lifesaving service to the NHS is provided free of charge and is funded entirely by public donation and sponsorship. We transport blood, pathology & microbiology specimens, patient notes, X-rays, breast milk, and other medical supplies. In 2012, we made 3,648 deliveries, riding more than 120,000 miles.
Freewheelers EVS operate a fleet of motorcycles each equipped with high-visibility markings, blue lights and sirens for emergency use. If our service did not exist hospitals would be forced to use taxis or commercial couriers.
Freewheelers EVS is run entirely by volunteers. All our riders hold an advanced motorcycling qualification, such as the advanced riding test by RoSPA, or IAM. We also have a team of fund raisers and telephone co-ordinators.
| Freewheelers' volunteers were awarded The Queen's Award for Voluntary Service in 2008. This is recognised as the MBE for Volunteers. |
We are als
o founding members of the Nationwide Association of Blood Bikes which represents the existing blood bike charities at a national level and helps new groups to get established.
The existing NABB members reach more than 85% of the country's population.
Will your next journey save a life? Ours could.
Feel free to contact us if you would like more information.
A fresh look at what we do
We are warming up the printer!
Our team has been busy updating our information brochure.
It's not that we have changed what we do, but we wanted to modernise our information to let you as the reader know about us. Plus we wanted it to fit in with the brand designs we created on our gazeebo and flags.
We will shortly have these out at any events we are attending.
A Stiggy Situation
Whilst attending our first ever Bristol Motor Show event at 'The Mall' Cribbs Causway we were approached by a guy dressed in a white one piece race suit, also wearing a white helmet & dark visor. We've seen this guy before on TV but do you think we could get a word out of him? - NOT A CHANCE !!
Does he want to be a coordinator?
No way- He doesnt talk to anyone!
Does he want to be a rider?
No way- He'd break all the speed limits!
Does he want to be a fundraiser?
No way- cos after a couple of photos & a quick sit on the bike, Off he went!!!
Quicker than you can say "The Stig!"
A load of skittles
We would like to say thank you to the ladies of the South Avon Skittle League for their kind donation of £1,520 which is greatly appreciated by us all at Freewheelers EVS.
You must have put in a lot of work to raise this amount for us.
Visit to Chard School
Two of our Volunteers recently visited Chard School in Somerset following a Charity Presentation Competition which was won by Tom, a pupil who had used Freewheelers as the subject for his presentation.
On departure from the School we were given some thank you messages from the pupils in Monmouth Class which were too good to keep to ourselves.
Click on the pi
ctures to see them in their full glory !{jcomments off}
Every Little Helps
We were really excited when we heard we had been selected as part of the Asda Community Life in-store campaign in the Trowbridge store.
We regularly collect and deliver to the hospital in Trowbridge. Our riders have been nipping in to Asda to take a look at progress which showed great potential from the off.
Freewheelers cannot survive without the kind support and the donations that we receive, so when we heard that the customers had deposited most of their green tokens to support us, we were very pleased to receive a donation of £200 from Asda.
Thank you to Asda and all the customers at the Trowbridge store.
Thank you MBDA UK Ltd !
A big thank you to MBDA UK Ltd based in Filton, Bristol, who have chosen Freewheelers EVS as one of their charities and will be running a series of events across the year. To help us on our way we recently received a cheque for £9167 raised from MBDA events and a charity auction administered by the Royal Navy and Royal Marines Charity (RNRMC) on their behalf.
Freewheelers Treasurer Mel Rowbottom receiving the cheque from the MBDA UK ltd Charity team
(l-r) Amy Crawford, Michael Holding, Sandy Stanton, Kerry Tatlock and Ray Watts. Plus Penny Taylor who couldn’t be there on the day.
Kerry Tatlock (2nd from right) is also one of our riders, was able to show off the bike at work and will be doing a lunchtime talk to his colleagues to explain what we are all about and may be generate some more riders or co-ordinators for our volunteer list..
There may be further opportunities for Freewheelers members to join in with potential team quiz events and charity balls later in the year.
Shop via us!
If you are a regular online purchaser of goodies no matter how big or small, then don't go direct to your online store, go to www.easyfundraising.org.uk and choose your supplier from their list. eg Amazon, Tesco and many many others.
You then end up going to your recognised online store and do everything else as per normal.
The advantage to Freewheelers is that we get a small % of the value of whatever you buy from 0.1% up to 5% in some instances.
All you need to do is register which is very quick and easy by going to www.easyfundraising.org.uk fill in your details, select Freewheelers as your chosen charity, then away you go. You can even tick the box to gift aid the % element we get, even more free cash for us.
Cost to you - absolutely nothing, just 5 mins of your time to register and then remember to go via this site for all your purhcases in future (there is even a reminder widget to help you).
Advantage to you - you may get discount on your purchases too for helping a charity.
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