The final votes have been tallied and Agrii is delighted to announce that the Border Search and Rescue Unit (BSARU) is the winner of its nationwide search for Rural Community Champions – winning £1,000 to put towards its local work.
Last month Agrii announced the three regional finalists for the competition from over 100 nominations across the UK – Norfolk farmer David Jones, BSARU in Kelso and Lingen Community Broadband, which based in North Herefordshire - one from each Agrii region – North, East and West. Since this announcement, Agrii customers have been busy voting for their favourites at Agrii iFarm events this summer, with the BSARU coming out on top when voting closed after the last event.
Agrii launched the Rural Community Champions competition in January this year. It asked the farming community and general public to send in their nominations as part of its nationwide campaign to identify and celebrate the people who make a real difference to the rural communities in which they live and work.
The volunteers at the BSARU provide mountain rescue assistance in the rural community of the Scottish borders, and are on call 24 hours a day, every day of the year. Many of them juggle working full time in agriculture with their volunteering duties for the BSARU. Police Scotland rely heavily on the team as a resource to search for missing people in rural areas and members of the unit are trained to the same search standard as specialist police units.
The unit covers the Eastern Borders, Lammermuir and Cheviot Hills, but are often called in to assist other teams throughout Scotland and the North of England. In January alone the team of volunteers were called out on five occasions, in appalling weather conditions, to search for missing or stranded walkers – equating to 412 man hours over and above their normal working day.
Stuart Fuller-Shapcott, who is the team leader for BSARU and has volunteered with the team for 24 years, said: “We are absolutely delighted to have won this competition. All of our team members give up their time for fund raising, training and call-outs when needed, so they are very grateful to receive this acknowledgement. We now need to replace one of our 4x4 ambulances, at a cost of at least £50K, so every penny helps us towards this.
“We have spent the last few weeks providing first aid cover at a large number of local events, so it’s fantastic to have this recognition from the public. On behalf of all the team, we would like to sincerely thank everybody who voted for us.”
Mark Thomas, Agrii’s Head of Marketing said: “We would like to congratulate BSARU on its very deserving win - they are true Rural Community Champions! Both of the runner’s up were also very commendable finalists and we hope they continue their outstanding community work. We would also like to thank our customers for taking the time to vote at our iFarm events. We had an excellent overall response to our Rural Community Champions competition and it’s clear to see that there are many people making a big difference to their communities. ”
The Rural Community Champions campaign was run in conjunction with FCN, the charity supported by Agrii which provides guidance and support to farming families in times of crisis. Through campaigns like the Rural Community Champions project, Agrii hopes to raise the profile and highlight the importance of rural communities, and in turn demonstrate the support that FCN can offer farming families in times of need.
