13 Nov Continuing to recognise Torbay’s community champions

Step forward the latest, but not the last of the Community Champion Award winners and take a bow; you absolutely deserve it.

As revealed in previous columns, we were overwhelmed by the sheer number of nominations that were made – an impressive 180 of them, but there could only be one overall winner in each of the categories.

Over the last couple of weeks, we have celebrated the winners of the Health and Wellbeing Champion, Carer of the Year, Emergency Worker of the Year, the Volunteer of the Year and the Young Volunteer of the Year.

This week we focus on the remaining categories, starting with the Volunteering Team of the Year with nominations for Phoenix Rising, Torquay United Supporters Trust and the HM Coastguard Rescue Team Torbay winners.

Their nomination read: “Torbay Rescue Coastguard Team volunteers help rescue people who have fallen or are taken ill on coastal paths, trapped on cliffs, cut off from tides or struggling in the water. They also undertake duties such as staffing helicopter landing sites, assisting police in searching for vulnerable and missing people or attending reports of possible unexploded ordnance on beaches, plus giving safety advice to seafarers.

“The team attend around 150 plus incidents a year and their impact keeping the coast safe is essential. The team are all employed or self-employed and regularly leave their jobs to attend incidents and drop everything they are doing, e.g. leaving in the middle of mealtimes with the family or in the middle of the night when it’s cold, wet and windy to attend incidents.”

The Good Neighbour Award was another hotly contested category and the finalists were Jess Gane, Mervyn Brooking and Pauline Baker, but it was Jess who carried off the award with this nomination:

“Jess is a busy young mother of four and a business owner, and she still finds time to get to know and help her neighbours and is devoted to improving her local community for all who live there.

“She bakes cakes for neighbours’ birthdays, knocks on the door of newcomers and invites them for coffee and events. She also organises BBQs and invites all her neighbours around so they can get to know each other.

“She does her neighbour’s shopping when they are sick and gives them lifts and goes with them to appointments when they need support. She’s the neighbour that’s noticed the old lady that’s not been around and knocks on their door, or calls social services to help them if needed. She’s the neighbour who takes the young single mother to the children’s groups to help build confidence and help them with their first baby.

“Everyone knows Jess in Melville.”

The Climate and Environment was a celebration for Play Torbay, Megan Hart and the overall winner Cricketfield Community Garden, whose citation read: “A friendly, welcoming and safe space in Hele for all to attend.

“There are regular school visits, where groups of 15-30 school children visit at a time and are divided into three smaller groups – one will learn about bugs and the insect life of the garden, another will be learning about herbs and other food including tasting and taking samples home, and the other group will either be planting or watering specific areas, then they swap around, with a well-deserved drink and biscuit before heading back to school. The schools also have their own little plots to maintain.

“Referrals’ are also made to the space from local organisations such as Social Prescribers, Support Workers and Community Builders; where individuals can attend that may have some mental/physical health issues.

“An Educational Shed was added this year along with four rescue chickens Only organic methods are used and gifts/waste from local organisations, for example, wood chippings or cardboard are recycled.

“During the better weather months, the garden puts on events that are mainly free where the local community can visit, look around the garden, hear about it and what its potential uses are and how it is currently used, raising funds through bake sales, crafting, potting up, general maintenance of the site. It is truly a community garden, but a lot of it is down to the efforts of just two people – Jemma and Paddy Cain.”

Next week, in the final part of this series, we reveal the Lifetime Award Winner, the Community’s Champion of the Year and three special awards that were made to thank those who worked so hard for us all during COVID.