May Day May Day! Will you be a superhero?

Save the Children’s biggest ever appeal for emergency fundraisers launches this week on 2 May

Friday 1 May 2009

On the anniversary of two emergencies  - Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar (Burma) and the earthquake in China - we're looking for hundreds of volunteers (aka ‘superheroes’) who will drop everything to help raise funds when an emergency hits.

In the first appeal of its kind, we're calling on all the UK's superheroes to sign up as fundraisers for emergencies. 

Every hero who signs up gets an emergency kit, not to be opened until instructed. As soon as the next emergency strikes, before it even hits the headlines, superheroes will receive a red alert text alerting them to the disaster. They'll then launch into emergency mode, breaking open their kits.

The emergency kit - sponsored by metal packaging company Impress - will contain:

  • branded t-shirts
  • ten top-tips for fundraising
  • world maps
  • a memory stick showing clips from our emergency responses
  • guidelines on how to get out there fast and raise funds to save children’s lives

Matt Willis, from Busted, was the first superhero to take up the challenge: “I've taken up Save the Children's challenge to be a superhero in emergencies because they've shown me that anyone can save lives if they want to. You don't have to have superpowers to make a difference. I hope that I can relay that message to people so that when they feel moved by an emergency like I know I was during the Burma cyclone and Chinese earthquake last year, that they know that they can do something to help. Save the Children desperately need funds as soon as a disaster strikes so they can reach victims of the disaster and protect them from the life threatening experiences going on around them. They can use your support to save children's lives."

Last year we reached 1,726,761 people affected by emergencies, of which 1,107,299 were children.

Tanya Steele, Save the Children's Director of Fundraising, said, “When an emergency strikes, Save the Children leap into action  immediately, so that we can reach the children and families caught  up in a disaster as quickly as possible. We want the UK public to leap into action too. We know there are thousands of superheroes out there who can raise vital funds to help Save the Children scale up in an emergency. Please call the hotline now, it doesn’t cost any money just a little bit of time and you could help save children’s lives.”

Be a superhero

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