This year has seen a dramatic change in how St John organisations are delivering life-saving first aid training around the globe. Covid-19 has meant that much of our usual way of working and teaching was forced to shut down during the heights of the pandemic, causing significant reduction in our ability to spread first aid knowledge.

Committed staff and volunteers have been finding innovative ways to keep on reaching people around the world;  St John organisations in developed countries have already re-established first aid training classes using high quality online training, which allows the 'in person' aspects to recommence with smaller groups maintaining social distance rules. In addition, some new online services, responding to emerging community health issues like mental health first aid, are now on offer in many regions.  

For our St John organisations in Africa, the Caribbean and Asia-Pacific it is not that straightforward.  

They are not ready to make the jump to online training, and traditional in person training can only be delivered to much smaller class sizes. Their income from training commercial clients has been reduced to zero in some areas, and this means that they cannot cover the cost of providing charitable training or other services to the wider community.

Missing out on these training for schools, church groups or other community groups means that St John cannot enable thousands of local people to help their neighbours, friends or family when urgent help is needed. These organisations need your help to continue delivering St John’s first aid training, a mission they have been performing for over 100 years.

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Charitable first aid training in Ghana

St John’s Principal Health Educator Emmanuel Arko Larbi talks about the challenges St John Ghana’s first aid training faces during the current Covid-19 pandemic and what impact this has on St John and the local communities.

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Will you support us this Christmas with your donation and help us restart charitable first aid courses where they matter the most?