TAVISTOCK Community First Responders are on a mission to teach the youngsters of Tavistock and the surrounding area ‘invaluable’ lifesaving CPR skills — but they need financial support to make their goal a reality.

On the back of teaching the whole of St Peter’s Junior School the lifesaving technique of CPR using borrowed equipment, the first responders now want to buy their own training kit so they can teach more children and adults how to save the life of someone having a cardiac arrest.

In the first training session in CPR they have given, the volunteer first responders taught nearly 150 pupils about defibrillator awareness and how to carry out CPR.

The training was part of the British Heart Foundation and South Western Ambulance Service’s national campaign ‘Restart a Heart’.

The first responders borrowed resuscitation mannequins, known as ‘Annies’, from Tavistock College and training defibrillators from Dartmoor Search and Rescue in order to give the children a demonstration on how to perform lifesaving skills — carrying out decompressions to the beat of the recently popular children’s song Baby Shark — and the children were then able to practise on the Annies.

First responder Paul Johnson said following the session, they received pictures from parents of the children practising their CPR skills on their teddy bears and even teaching their parents the lifesaving skills they had learned.

The training was deemed so successful, the first responders now want to branch out to be able to offer the training to other schools, clubs and organisations, but would like their own equipment to be able to do so.

Paul said: ‘This was the first training session we have done and it was so successful we want to do more. It was an absolutely brilliant day, we all came away buzzing from how much the kids picked up from it. I’m a strong believer that the earlier you teach something, the more confidence they have in it. These kids now will know what to do if they ever had to perform CPR or even if they are physically unable to do it, they can tell someone else what to do. We think it is an invaluable skill and as a parent myself, I think it should be on the curriculum for all children to learn.

‘We didn’t know what to expect when we went into the school but the kids were so well behaved and so interested in what we were showing them. You know you’ve done your job when they are going home and teaching their parents CPR. While we are on the crest of the wave we want to try to go with it and next year we will try to do as many training sessions as we can.’

Paul expressed thanks to Tavistock College and Dartmoor Search and Rescue for the loan of the equipment without which they wouldn’t have been able to carry out the training session.

Executive headteacher of St Peter’s School Chris Connors said: ‘It is fantastic that we had a team of first responders in school with our pupils. Not only were they able to discuss with the children first hand how important the Restart a Heart programme is, but we now have 150 young people who are confident in the basics of CPR and defibrillator use. This is a life skill that goes beyond fronted adverbials!’

The Tavistock First Responders have set up a fundraising website, with the hope of raising £1,500 to be able to buy a set of ten mini inflatable Annies, two proper resuscitation Annies and two training defibrillators which would be enough equipment to train 20 to 30 children at a time.

Anyone who would like to donate to the cause can do so by visiting www.gofundme.com/life-saving-training-kit