event & community support

This year our Charity of the Year is Hampshire & Isle of Wight Air Ambulance, as voted for by Red Funnel customers, the wider Island community and our colleagues.

Hampshire and Isle of Wight Air Ambulance brings the hospital to the patient. It's highly skilled teams of doctors, dispatchers, pilots and paramedics respond to an average of five patients every day - be it a cardiac arrest, a road traffic collision or a serious medical episode. 

The charity has responded to almost 2,500 emergency callouts in 2024 alone - more than 20,000 in its 17-year history. Each mission is funded entirely by the kindness and generosity from people across Hampshire and the Isle of Wight.

Dame Ellen MacArthur knows a thing or two about sailing. But at the Ellen MacArthur Cancer Trust, sailing is just the vehicle in which young people who are living through and beyond cancer are inspired to believe in a brighter future.

“Sailing gives everyone the chance to find out what they are capable of alongside others who completely understand what they’ve been through,” says Dame Ellen of her charity.

Even after they are given the all-clear, cancer can impact young people’s lives long into the future. Their mental wellbeing in particular takes a massive hit.

Once their treatment has finished, they are often left with fewer friends and struggle with relationships, their education suffers, they miss out on work experience, and they develop body image issues. Late effects of being diagnosed young include infertility, extreme fatigue, osteoporosis, thyroid problems, and hearing or vision loss.

Through the charity’s sailing and outdoor adventures, young people gain a new sense of purpose and self-worth, rediscover their independence, and feel optimistic about what comes next in life. They realise what they are capable of, stop feeling like ‘the only one’, and their mental wellbeing improves. They start to re-establish their purpose and place in the world and believe in a brighter future.

Red Funnel kindly cover the costs of young people travelling to the Isle of Wight for this life-changing support. In doing so, they help keep these transformational trips free for young people to access.