TO celebrate 25 years of saving lives, Wiltshire Air Ambulance (WAA) is encouraging schools, clubs, businesses and individuals to join in with silver themed fundraising during Air Ambulance Week.

The mass fundraiser starts on September 21-27 and the theme for this year is ‘Show Us Your Silver’ where people can get involved by wearing a silver wig, dressing up as a robot, holding a silver cake bake-off or coming up with their own silver fundraising ideas.

Rebecca de la Bedoyere, WAA’s fundraising manager, said: “We’re celebrating our Silver Jubilee with a silver themed Air Ambulance week and we’d love as many schools, businesses, groups and individuals as possible to take part and show us their silver. From dressing in silver to collecting your silver coins to baking silver cakes – anything goes as long as it’s silver.

“Last year, over 3,000 people across Wiltshire took part in some hero themed fundraising for Air Ambulance Week and raised over £14,000, and we want this year to be bigger, better and shinier.

“Every penny raised during our Silver Jubilee Air Ambulance Week will help ensure we can keep flying and saving lives across Wiltshire, so please get in touch if you’d like to take part.”

The charity can supply collection buckets, balloons, stickers and posters to promote your event. For schools, it has a quiz, word search and origami puzzle available.

There will be collections at supermarkets across Wiltshire throughout Air Ambulance Week.

To get involved visit www.wiltshireairambulance.co.uk or call 01380 739453.

To donate by text, text HELI22 followed by £1/£5/£10 to 70070.

Since the charity’s new helicopter, a Bell 429, started operating on January 9, it has attended 342 incidents (up until 27 August), including 100 road traffic collisions, 47 cardiac related incidents, 29 sporting incidents and 38 incidents involving children.

Earlier this month the helicopter began carrying blood onboard, enabling WAA’s Critical Care Paramedics to give pre-hospital blood transfusions to patients who suffer life-threatening bleeding caused by trauma and some acute medical conditions.