The Charity of the festival is chosen each year by the festival committee.
Over recent years thousands of pounds has been donated to charity from customer’s unused drinks tokens.
The Festival Charity for 2019 is Severn Freewheelers
Severn Freewheelers are a registered charity with two objectives.
To relieve sickness and protect health by the provision of transport of urgently needed blood, drugs, human tissues and other medical requirements between hospitals and blood transfusion banks primarily but not exclusively in Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire and North Wiltshire
To promote safer motorcycling.
About Severn Freewheelers
Severn Freewheelers life started with some six members in October 2006, struggling to raise finance to go ‘live’ in one area with a vision to provide the service in Gloucestershire, Hereford & Worcester and North Wiltshire. Here we are just eleven years later, fully operational in our target areas with eight motorcycles and over 100 members.
Severn Freewheelers EVS provides a lifesaving service to the NHS and is provided free of charge and funded entirely by public donation and sponsorship. We are often referred to as Blood Bikes or Blood Runners but we do much more, transporting test samples, patient notes, X-rays, frozen human milk and other essential medical supplies. In 2018, we made over 4,000 deliveries, covering a distance of some 150,000 miles. We save the NHS a fortune!
SF EVS operates a fleet of eight, specially adapted BMW R1200RT-P and BMW F800 motorcycles, equipped with high-visibility markings, blue lights and sirens for emergency use, which enable us to save lives by delivering urgently required items safely and promptly. If our service did not exist hospitals would be forced to use a costly and potentially slow taxis or commercial couriers.
Severn Freewheelers EVS is run entirely by volunteers. Not one single member benefits financially from the operations of the charity, every penny donated goes entirely towards the running costs. All our riders hold an advanced motorcycling qualification, e.g. the advanced riding test by RoSPA or the IAM. We also have a team of fund raisers and telephone coordinators – both vital to running the service. Incoming requests from hospitals are categorised by the on-duty coordinator as non-urgent, urgent, or emergency and the nearest of our three (four at weekends) on-duty bikes is dispatched to assist.
We need to raise around £70k per annum in order to run the service and we budget to replace our motorcycle fleet every two / three years