From left: Donnie (Ross's driver on the day!), Anne Harrison (Community Resuscitation Development Officer, NHS Scotland), Ross Cowie (Lucky2BHere), Colin Maxwell (Building Operations Coordinator - Zurich Glasgow), John MacPherson (Area Sales Manager, Cardiac Science) and Stephen McKenna (Head of Broker Market - Zurich Glasgow)
Selling a raffle ticket during a chance encounter on the Isle of Skye has led to a charity grant to the value of £30,000 for Scottish charity Lucky2BHere. On Thursday 6 October, Zurich Insurance in Glasgow presented a grant award to Lucky2BHere to mark the beginning of a three year partnership between the charity and themselves.
Colin Maxwell, Building Operations Coordinator for Zurich Insurance in Glasgow, first met Ross Cowie, from Lucky2BHere on the island when on holiday at the end of May this year. The charity was set up by Ross after he survived a near fatal cardiac arrest in December 2006. His survival was literally a two hundred to one chance and he owes his life to the fact that an ambulance happened to be in the vicinity and the paramedics managed to defibrillate him.
The main aims of the charity are to deliver equipment and training to communities, giving them the empowerment to manage their own situations between a life threatening event arising and the medical professionals arriving. A further objective is for Emergency Life Support Training, including Defib training, to be added to the curriculum of every secondary school throughout Scotland.
Ross was doubly lucky for not only had Colin already discussed the need for a defibrillator in the Zurich office as part of his Health & Safety role, he also sits on the Zurich employees’ charity committee. What’s more, the committee just happened to be looking into entering into a multi-year funding relationship with a local charity.
The three year charity partnership will be the first multi-year partnership entered into by the Zurich Glasgow office. In addition to the £10,000 a year committed to Lucky2BHere over the three year period by Zurich, plans are already underway for eight Zurich employees to be trained in the use of the defibrillators. The grant will also be the largest grant awarded to date to Lucky2BHere by a corporate.
Ross says: “One in two hundred is not a good statistic so I thought about how to go about improving that, considering that in a lot of Western countries they have survival rates as good as one in four. Saving a life on one hand is massive, but on the other it doesn’t take a lot.
Our partnership with such a large and well respected company as Zurich is a fantastic boost. All the money will be directed towards the purchase of equipment while the delivery of training by the Heartstart teams is done free of charge. The link will also certainly help increase the Lucky2bhere profile.”
