Thanks to air ambulance for saving premature babies

A little girl has single-handedly raised more than £1,000 for a key NHS service after they brought home her two prematurely-born cousins.
10-year-old Amber Hardman has helped raise £1,200 for NWAS by selling cakes.  She is pictured with pilot Captain Neil Airey.10-year-old Amber Hardman has helped raise £1,200 for NWAS by selling cakes.  She is pictured with pilot Captain Neil Airey.
10-year-old Amber Hardman has helped raise £1,200 for NWAS by selling cakes. She is pictured with pilot Captain Neil Airey.

Amber Hardman, 10, was inspired to raise money for the North West Air Ambulance after they successfully air-lifted her cousins Tommy and Mason from Bristol to Royal Preston Hospital after they were born at just 23 weeks.

She raised £1,200 in just three months by selling home-made cakes for 50p each at the Willows Catholic Club in Kirkham every weekend.

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Amber, who lives in Freckleton and Kirkham, said: “My cousins Tommy and Mason were born early and they were born in Bristol, and when they were old eough to be transported up here it was too far for them to be transported by a normal ambulance, so they air-lifted them.”

The Strike Lane School pupil handed over her significant donation at Blackpool Airport on Friday, where she met with an NWAS pilot and took a seat in the helicopter.

She said: “It was kind of small but it was really fun. It looked complicated in the front because of all the buttons, and what I didn’t know is that at the back it can open up so they can get the stretcher out.

“The pilot was very nice and thankful.

“I’m going to keep on raising money for their good cause.”

Her proud grandma Karen Hardman, 57, said: “Amber wanted to say thank you for bringing them home.

“She raised £600 on a charity night that she did in March.

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“It was all her own idea. She has enjoyed baking and started baking free cakes and giving them away at the club, and then she came up with the idea.

“She does all her own baking. The only thing I do is take the tray out of the oven. She weighs the ingredients and checks them.

“Everybody at the club knows Amber. She’s very popular.”

Kirkham town councillor Keith Beckett, who helped Amber raise the money, said: “Little Amber came to the club with her grandma for bingo and she said ‘Keith, if I make some cakes can I sell them in the club?’

“She had not even asked her parents or her grandma, and how could you refuse a young girl like that?

“She makes lovely cakes and she even made some for the pilot.

“For her to come along and do that off her own back I think is great, and the people at the Willows Club have done her proud.”

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