Children Are Butterflies donate £40,000 to help keep hope alive

Children Are Butterflies have made a generous donation of £40,000 to help fund a new incubator project for our national Children’s Air Ambulance charity.

Children Are Butterflies were a charity set up to provide financial assistance to bereaved families. When the Children’s Funeral Fund for England came into place in July 2019, Children Are Butterflies no longer needed to provide this assistance, and so looked at the best way to utilise the funds going forward.

They decided to make the extremely generous donation, the majority of which came from exceptional fundraising efforts by the Rust Bucket Rally, to go towards the Children’s Air Ambulances’ incubator project – as this is closely aligned with Children Are Butterflies.

The Rust Bucket Rally is an annual charity rally where teams drive their £500 cars for a chosen charity. Last year’s rally was the biggest to date, where 50 cars drove 2,500 miles across ten countries – raising an incredible amount for Children Are Butterflies.Jon Farmer, on behalf of Children Are Butterflies, commented:

“Children Are Butterflies have been supporting parents financially at the worst of times for the past 10 years. Because we were forced to make the sad decision to close the charity so soon after a simply heroic fundraising effort by The Rust Bucket Rally, we knew that we owed it to them and all our supporters over the years to make a real impact when making decisions on how we dispersed the funds.

“The incubator project for the Children’s Air Ambulance was selected because this service, already helping to save children’s lives, will soon enable life-saving decisions for neonatal patients to receive precisely the right care, in the very best place, at precisely the right time. If that saves one family from the pain of bereavement then we have made a valuable contribution, and would be such a worthy legacy for Children Are Butterflies.”

Children’s Air Ambulance Legacies and In Memory Manager, Chloe Bass, added:

“We are so grateful that the Trustees of Children Are Butterflies chose to support the Children’s Air Ambulance when dissolving their charity. This donation, which was aided by the amazing fundraising efforts of the Rust Bucket Rally, will go directly to our incubator project, used to transport neonatal patients on our aircraft.

“This funding will really make such a difference to our charity and we are very grateful to both Children Are Butterflies and the Rust Bucket Rally.”