Chairman`s Award

This award is for projects that have brought people from different backgrounds together to change their communities for the better.

Runner-up:

The Friendship Support Scheme brings a ray of sunshine into the lives of people with learning disabilities. Each of this dedicated group of volunteers has befriended a learning disabled adult and helps them take part in normal activities. Based in Carlisle, Wigton and Penrith, the group continues to make a real impact. Volunteers might take their friend shopping, out for dinner or to the football – whatever they would like to do but find difficult on their own. And as nominator and the group’s co-ordinator Susan Gray explained, they often overcome huge social barriers.

Winner:

Since her husband died 8 years ago, Margaret Bravo, 71 has devoted her life to volunteering. Horrified by the poverty she saw in a TV programme on India, she decided to help by sponsoring an Indian doctor. But pretty soon it wasn’t enough – in her mid seventies, she decided to go over there herself. With a background in nursery nursing and special needs care, she began by working with Indian street children. She has since cared for HIV children in Transylvania, lepers and blind people in India and orphans with special needs in Romania.