Hart voor Hart Venray - a heartsafe municipality since 2008
Venray - The Netherlands
Founded in 2008 by the Junior Chamber Venray, the local organisation Hard voor Hart started with the creation of a heart safe municipality in Venray, being one of the first of its kind in the Netherlands. There were three major challenges. First of all equipping the municipality with sufficient publicly accessible AEDs. Second, recruiting close to a 1000 locals to be trained into first responders. And of course, last but not least, finding the sufficient funding to make this all possible.
Together with Junior Chamber Venray, the organisation collected over € 150,000 in funding at local companies, non-profit organisations, local government and sponsors enabling the plan to be rolled out.
Now, 17 years later, the network is still operational, consisting out of 48 AEDs and nearly a 1000 volunteers. But most important, resulting in many successful deployments and lives saved!
The AEDs are now an integral part of Venray's street scene
With the close to 50 AEDs spread all over the municipality, and being there for such a long time now, every inhabitant of Venray knows the nearest AED, whether it is located on a commercial building, sports venue, municipality building or a house. They have integrated into Venray's street scene and can be found everywhere.
The current network is equipped with the Rotaid 247 Connected Cabinet, ensuring maximum effectiveness and sustainability for the organisation. Furthermore, the cabinets now enable the organization to manage a large AED network, without the enormous effort that was required at the start of the project.
