It was a day meant to help promote emergency preparedness, but also was a day also to help raise money for a well-known organization, the Red Cross. The annual “Stretcher Walk” was held recently at the Emergency Preparedness Day at Fanshawe College by a handful of graduating paramedic students, and the five participants in the walk helped to raise a total of $630. The students took a walk for about four or five hours around the campus and into the area surrounding Fanshawe College.

Stephen Fryers is a graduating paramedics student and he said the event went pretty good regardless of the small number of participants.

“Our goal was to kind of use this as a test run. So we designed the event, we got Red Cross involved, and the school involved, did it with our small group of about five people. And then we took what went well, what went didn't go well and we've kind of made notes of that and then were going to propose it as a larger event for the second year students in the paramedic program,” said Fryers.

The $630 raised from the event is also heading towards a specific area within the Red Cross itself.

“It's being given to the Red Cross' disaster management services that's the specific section of the Red Cross that was in support of the emergency preparedness day, the part of Red Cross in major disasters that goes out and helps people.”

Finally, Fryers wanted to add a special note of thanks to his fellow classmates who participated in the walk on May 14th, they are Ashleigh Allan, Brittany McFarlane, Zoie Jones, William Jones and Tim Zima. He said that he hopes this event will become bigger and better in the years to come.