Winners of Babergh District Council’s Community Acheivement Awards are gearing up for a special celebration this evening (March 5th).
More than 20 winners were plucked from over 40 nominations received for the awards, which is entering its 16th year and aims to highlight the work of numerous community individuals or groups who consistently make the lives of others better in some way.
All the winners were notified just before Christmas and were invited to the awards ceremony, which is being held at The Stoke By Nayland Golf Club, to celebrate their achievement and to pick up their award.
Jill Barton, Babergh’s Corporate Support Officer, said: "We always look forward to the Community Achievement Awards ceremony and like to think that it is a community version of The Oscars.
“Every year, the award panel is amazed at the commitment, enthusiasm and dedication shown by all our winners and this year is no exception. The evening really gives us a chance to let the winners know just how special they are.”
Mark Murphy, from BBC Radio Suffolk’s Breakfast programme will compere the achievement awards ceremony, which is sponsored by Prolog.
The winners were:
Under 18s Awards
- Abbie Arnold - Uplands Middle School - Sudbury
- Christopher Neill - Hadleigh
- Jack Turner, Andy Hately and Scott Lawrence – Glemsford Sports Club
- Marlon Lockyear, Katrina Henderson and Callum Gibson – The Royal Hospital School - Holbrook
- Year 11 Award Scheme Development & Accreditation Network Group (ASDAN) – East Bergholt High School
Over 18s Awards
- Vicky Charlesworth – The Ryes School, Sudbury
- Shirley Smith – Great Cornard
- Barry Dallas – Hadleigh Sea Scout Group
- Pat and Ron Bennett – West Suffolk Voluntary Association for the Blind
- John Moles – 3 Parishes Response Team
- Sara Sunderland – Glemsford Parish Council
- Les Stebbings – Shotley
- Gillian Robertson – Kettlebaston
- John Blackmore – Bentley
- Michelle Hall – Great Cornard
- Mervyn Austin – East Bergholt
- Tracey Alexander – Hadleigh
- Neil Thomas – Hadleigh
- Daphne Clark – Edwardstone
- Ken and Olive Willingale – Nayland
- Juliet Allerton – Chattisham
- Brian Quinton – Suffolk Young People’s Health Project (4YP)
Community / Voluntary Group Awards
- Churches Together in Sudbury & District
- Ansell Community Centre Luncheon Group – Hadleigh
ENDS
Audio version of this news item
 Audio version (MP3, 1 minute 53 seconds)
Transcript of the audio version
Jill Barton: The awards have been running for 16 years and they highlight the achievements of those people in our district who make a real difference, either in their local community or their school community. We have 25 winners this year made up of young people, under 18, groups and adults. We’ve got a real selection of winners. We have a winner in Hadleigh, Christopher Neal who is Chairperson of his teen council, he’s done fabulous work there. We have a group of young boys from Glemsford who have set up and formed their own sports club for children in the village who are around the age of 6 upwards. We have a group in Hadleigh called the Ansell Community Luncheon Group who provide over 80 lunches per week for elderly people and those who are housebound. And we are really proud of all our winners this year.
Each year we have such a diverse range of people that it never ceases to amaze me how people find the time to do what they do for their own communities. We are very proud of the scheme in Babergh because we actually started it and I believe others may be running a similar scheme.
We are sponsored by Prolog in Sudbury who actually have supported us in this scheme for the past 7 years.
The celebration is wonderful, we call it our Babergh Oscars Evening because we have quite a lovely evening at Stoke by Nayland Club and the award winners can come and have a lovely meal and be presented with a photograph, a certificate and a piece of glassware.
One of our winners is Brian Quinton and he is a volunteer with the Suffolk Young Peoples Health Project and he’s done over 1,000 hours of cooking, gardening, and outdoor skills with young people which I think is a fantastic achievement.
Brian Quinton: What I do on a Wednesday evening, we’ve had for the last 2 years the cookery evening. The cooking is the development point for young people, they come along and we do a whole variety of cooking skills, even feeding a party of some 14 people, a 3 course menu which the youngsters not only prepared, cooked and served and did the washing up afterwards.
We also have an allotment project called 4YP. They enjoy the learning part to it, they enjoy the fact that its not school, its somewhere they can come to that’s safe. That they are treated as adults and most certainly they develop their own self esteem and their own confidence. The award is the icing on the cake you might say as the enjoyment I get from working with young people is a reward in itself. ENDS
More Information on 2008 Community Awards.
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