Thanks to our incredible supporters, we’re delighted to announce that our hugely successful Christmas campaign, `Ready to Save Lives’ has raised a fantastic £471K, helping to fund our vital lifesaving work across Kent, Surrey and Sussex.
Ready to Save Lives was launched as we marked the 35th anniversary of KSS being founded by the remarkable Kate Chivers. The campaign aimed to help ensure that our specialist doctors and paramedics will be there for people across the region in their most urgent hour of need now and for many years to come.
Our heartfelt thanks go to the thousands of supporters who generously donated to us during the campaign, which ran from October to December last year. We are deeply touched by the hundreds of kind messages we’ve received from supporters about the campaign, including former patients and their loved ones and bereaved families, a testament to the impact KSS has had on so many lives.
Key to the success of Ready to Save Lives was a coordinated effort across Team KSS, which saw the campaign include lots of inspiring and fun ways for people to get involved, including an appeal letter, a raffle, and the chance to buy fantastic KSS Christmas cards and a calendar as well as attend our series of Carol Concerts.
The campaign was covered by local media including ITV Meridian, BBC South East, Kent Messenger and That’s TV, reaching a potential audience of 400M while our social media posts were seen 10M times.
Our campaign featured the poignant story of our former patient Sam Jenner, who was six months pregnant when she experienced a cardiac arrest at home. We explained how KSS Paramedic David Wright and his fellow crew members saved Sam and her unborn baby.
Sam Jenner: “Every Christmas is an even more special time than usual for me, my partner Mark and our son Jack as we know just how lucky we are to share them thanks to people just like you who go out of your way to support Air Ambulance Charity Kent Sussex Surrey (KSS).”
Former patient Madi Roome and her mother Jen helped get the campaign off to a flying start when they were interviewed by BBC South East about Madi’s incident in which she received terrible injuries after being kicked by a horse.
Sam Resouly, who was cared for by our team following a serious road traffic collision whilst out cycling, helped us maintain awareness of the campaign when he spoke to ITV Meridian alongside KSS crew members Doctor Harriet Tucker and Paramedic Jon Fisher as part of a report about keeping safe at Christmas.
In the two weeks before Christmas we were delighted to welcome over 2,000 of our wonderful supporters to four fantastic Carol Concerts across the region at Rochester Cathedral, Guildford Cathedral, Arundel Cathedral and Lancing College which raised an amazing total of £48K.
As Christmas Day approached, Paramedics Caroline Cox and Phill Richardson, who were part of our team working over the festive period, gave interviews to our local media about how they are ready to save lives 24/7, even on Christmas Day.
Although our Christmas campaign is closed, our work continues 24/7, 365 days a year, and we continue to need your support. Thanks to you we can reach people when they need us most. It costs £56K a day to run our lifesaving service, and most of that is funded by people like you.
To get 2025 off to a great start please support our lifesaving work by playing our New Year Raffle. As part of the raffle, former KSS patient Jez Stevens is sharing his inspirational story of recovery from a serious brain injury he sustained in an accident. With your help we can continue to be there for people like Jez, when they need us the most.
Thank you for your continuing support.
