Bluff Yacht Club gives back to lifesaving NSRI

The National Sea Rescue Institute (NSRI) gratefully received a sizeable donation from the Bluff Yacht Club (BYC) at a handover event held on Friday night, 16 November.
NSRI station commander, Andre Fletcher accepted the donation from the yacht club.
“We appreciate the donation and have had a long-standing relationship with BYC, supporting all their events and safety programmes. Any donation is welcome as we are a non-profit organisation. We thank the club for their generous donation which will be allocated to the Durban station and be used toward rescue equipment to ensure the communities are safe,” said Commander Fletcher.

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The NSRI was established over 50 years ago as a humanitarian service to save lives through search and rescue.
The rescue crew are all unpaid volunteers and donors equip them with the boats and equipment needed for the task. Since 2006 the NSRI has an educational mandate, which sees a team visit schools to talk about water safety and teach children, through roleplay, what to do in an emergency. More recently we have extended their service to include lifeguards as well as emergency flotation devices on unmanned beaches, in the form of pink rescue buoys.

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The rescue team aims to reduce drownings, which are a major cause of accidental death in South Africa and most of which are preventable. Pro-active education and reactive search and rescue are the NSRI’s core focus to ensure lives are saved. “We believe the sharing of knowledge, experience and expertise is an investment in our future.
“The NSRI is in the business of hope. We do not manufacture or sell a product. We instead sell the idea that a group of people who offer up their time, funded by a group of people who offer up finances, can collectively help others who are at their most vulnerable. This brings hope in a hopeless situation. The sincere goodwill of those who volunteer and those who donate have sustained this organisation for an incredible 50 years,” added Fletcher.
Visit the NSRI website www.nsri.org.za to find out more on how to donate to this worthy, life-saving organisation.