ON Tuesday, May 2, Provincial Grand Master of the Devonshire Freemasons, the Rt. Worshipful Brother Ian Kingsbury, accompanied by his wife Toni, visited the offices of Devon Air Ambulance Trust in Exeter, where they presented Fundraising Manager, Tracy Owen, with a certificate representing the donation for £4,000 given by Devonshire Freemasons through the Masonic Charitable Foundation.

This makes a total of £51,000 presented by Devonshire Freemasons through the Freemasons Grand Charity since 2007 and more than £110,000 when adding presentations made by individual lodges throughout Devonshire in the same period.

This grant has brought the total Masonic support given to the 20 regional Air Ambulances throughout England and Wales in 2017 to £180,000 and since 2007 to £2.1 million.

Rt. W. Bro. Ian Kingsbury said he was proud to be able to support the Devon Air Ambulance by creating a continuing and valuable link between the organisations.

He said: “I am proud to be part of an organisation which is helping to support air ambulance services throughout the country. Thanks to the tireless efforts of their doctors and air crew the lives of many local people are saved every year.”

Tracy Owen, Fundraising Manager from Devon Air Ambulance said: “We are extremely grateful to the Devonshire Freemasons for their continued generosity. Support like this ensures we can continue to keep our helicopters flying and provide our service.

“We are extremely proud that this year we celebrate 25 years of service to the county and that in November 2016, due to the fantastic and generous support we receive, we extended our service to operate until midnight. We look forward to continuing to support the Devonshire Freemasons with their fundraising in the future.”

Devon Air Ambulance Trust is extremely proud to be independent of Government and National Lottery funding and it costs £5.5 million every year to keep its two helicopters flying.

It relies entirely on the generous fundraising and donations from the people, businesses and communities of Devon, for which it is extremely grateful.

For more information and to find out how you can support Devon Air Ambulance please visit: www.daat.org