Konect and the First Responders

It’s hard to believe it’s April already. The start of the year has been a busy time here at RKAB Works; what with setting up our new website and all, I’ve not had moment to make the first blog post on it. I’ll correct that now.

Through our blog we want to share with you what’s happening at RKAB Works, a little of the background to some of the pictures in our shop and about some of the special projects we have undertaken.

So for this first blog I thought we would skip back to March and our local community magazine Konect. The Konect community magazine covers a number of West Lothian communities providing advertising and articles of local interest.

The March Konect Directory featured a great article about Bathgate Community First Responders, a volunteer group that provides life saving coverage in support of the Scottish Ambulance Service. When you dial 999 for a life threatening medical emergency, such as a cardiac arrest or suspected heart attack, then a First Responder may be dispatched to help out if they will be there before the paramedics. RKAB Works was lucky enough to supply photographs to illustrate the article.

It was good fortune that towards the end of 2015 Bathgate Community First Responders were chosen as one of the charities that S3 pupils at Armadale Academy for the Youth Philanthropy Initiative Scotland project. RKAB Works undertook a photo session with the First Responders for the S3 pupils to use as part of their presentation.

OK, I confess Richard, a member of staff at RKAB Works, is heavily involved with the First Responders and Andrew, another member of staff at RKAB, was one of the pupils involved in the project. Contacts are everything!

The photo session went really well and left us with a stock of pictures. These were invaluable when Konect came to write an article on the First Responders and needed some pictures to illustrate it. So the picture shown of volunteers practising their resuscitation techniques popped through the doors of 10,000 Bathgate and Torphichen homes.

There's gonna be loads of blog posts here in the future with news and behind-the-scenes look at our work. Get an email every time we post by joining our email list here.