Members of the Culfadda Community First Responders Group are celebrating after being chosen as a recipient of the Rural Action Awards Scheme.

The group, consisting of 20 dedicated local volunteers, works with the National Ambulance Service to provide essential emergency care within an 8km radius of Culfadda National School.

The group received an award from the Rural Action Award Scheme to purchase road signs highlighting the location of Defibrillators within this highly rural community.

Speaking about the service provided by the group, Rosaleen Walsh explained, ‘We are a voluntary group linked with the National Ambulance Service and our team members undergo training every 4-6 weeks. Our primary purpose is to respond quickly to 999 calls made from the area and to administer emergency care until the Ambulance Service arrives.’

‘We have 12 accessible Defibrillators for use and we wanted to make the locations of all these defibs as visible as possible to both the local community and visitors. We were delighted to receive the Rural Action Award to purchase road signs to allow this to happen.’

The Rural Action Awards scheme is run by Rural Action and is open to rural community-based organisations in Northern Ireland, or the border region of Ireland and offers the chance of securing £1000 or €1000 towards community projects. The scheme is currently open for applications where 3 further recipients will be randomly selected after the closing date of 20th December 2023.

The scheme is open to constituted rural community-based organisations including charities, not for profit community groups, sporting and cultural organisations, heritage groups, Parent Teacher Associations, youth groups/clubs and social enterprises. The scheme seeks to support practical, tangible and timebound projects where the project must complete within 12 weeks.

Teresa Canavan, Rural Action Chief Executive, explained, “We are delighted to support organisations such as the Culfadda Community First Responders Group. Our organisation strapline is ‘Making it Happen’ and this group certainly demonstrates that. We have another 3 Awards available, and recipients will be randomly selected after the closing date.’

“Groups wishing to enter must complete an online form available at www.ruralaction.co. The successful groups will then be contacted and following a simple verification process, can avail of the £1000/€1000 to use for their community action project. Full terms and conditions are available on our website.”

Notes to the Editor:
1. Photos captions:
Celebrating their Rural Action Award success with Joyce McMullan from Rural Action are Aoife McDonagh, John Cryan, Rosaleen Walsh, Padraic Duffy, Sean Gallagher, Damien Killoran from the Culfadda Community First Responders Group.  Inset – First Responder, Pat O’Grady with one of the directional signs purchased through the Award Scheme.
2. Rural Action was formed in 2019 as a not-for-profit social purpose company and became a registered charity in March 2022. It was established to meet an identified need for a regional delivery organisation with a focus on supporting grassroots communities. It seeks to make a positive contribution to the everyday lives of rural communities.
3. Our ambition to achieve this is not only through the work we do for others, but in our capacity as a not-for-profit charitable organisation to give back, to support and inspire rural communities to design, deliver and implement practical projects. The Rural Action Awards Scheme helps to fulfil this ambition.
4. The scheme is open to Rural community-based organisations based in Northern Ireland and the border region of Ireland.
5. To date the Rural Action Awards Scheme has supported 18 community projects, each receiving £1000/€1000.