Could you be a volunteer lifesaver?

The British Heart Foundation, teamed with the Yorkshire Ambulance Service, are offering free classes to instruct local people how to administer emergency life support, then pass that knowledge onto others.

Mark Fretter (52) of Goldthorpe, is looking for people to form the first group to be trained.

“What I’m trying to do is get a few volunteers together.

“At the moment it’s just me and my wife Andrea and we need about seven or eight people.

“Initial training will take just one day from 9am to about 4pm.

“Once the group is trained we’ll get free equipment supplied by the British Heart Foundation and we can then go off and train any group of people that wants to learn emergency life support.”

Mark added: “There isn’t a scheme like this round here. We could train Scout groups, Salvation Army groups, or just advertise in shops. I’m hoping to get it into schools eventually.”

There is no limit to the number of people that can apply. In fact, the more applicants there are the more people capable of performing and training first aid will be available.

“I live in Goldthorpe so I was thinking of training in Thurnscoe, Goldthorpe and  Bolton-on-Dearne.

“If there people from Swinton or Mexborough interested it’d be no problem for them to start a scheme up there.

“There’s no deadline for the scheme but the sooner we can get it going the sooner we can start training.”

Mark, a retired fire-fighter, is a volunteer community responder for the Yorkshire ambulance Service and is eager to see more people learn how to provide emergencey life support.

“The amount of people out there that don’t know much about how to deal with early life support.

If we could get this scheme going then more people can get trained in the community, and the better chance people have of surviving.”

Anyone interested in joing the scheme should contact Mark on 01709 880254 or 07894 388525 or send an email to [email protected].