Pride of Charnwood Awards, 2017

The Pride of Charnwood Awards aim to give positive recognition to young people aged 11-19 years who volunteer their time, effort and energy to improve the quality of life in Charnwood. 

Congratulations to all our nominees and awards winners, you are amazing and an inspiration to our community. 

This year's awards ceremony was hosted at Lynroys, Loughborough, on March 14 and was sponsored by the Central England Co-operative.

The Pride of Charnwood Awards are organised by the Charnwood Youth Council, with support from Charnwood Borough Council and Above and Beyond Community Interest Company, on behalf of Charnwood Community Safety Partnership.

The results

For personal privacy reasons, we can only provide some information to give you a flavour of the finalists.

Caring for Others Award

This award celebrates those young people who take on the role of caring for others. Megan Langham was awarded Caring for Others for her dedication towards an unpaid internship working with dementia sufferers.

Megan’s personal bravery has resulted in her forming strong relationships with the people she looks after, who often comment on her lovely attitude.

The Creativity Award

Nominees for this award use their creative skills in a way which benefits the community of Charnwood. Our winner, Ebony Horton, has been using her video and film skills to aid the Metropolitan Police with the work they do for young victims, witnesses and criminals. 

Ebony is described as having excelled tremendously, standing up for young people from socially disadvantaged communities.  

Helping the Community Award

Individuals were nominated for this award for their dedicated support to their local community. Helping the Community was awarded to 1st Loughborough Company Boys’ Brigade, who volunteer their own time and skills in order to help others.

In the past year the Boys' Brigade have helped set up coffee mornings, participated in projects to commemorate WWI and marshalled charity events. Their award-winning band has also played at well-loved local events, including Picnic in the Park and the Christmas Light Switch On.   

Personal Achievement Award

The Personal Achievement Award recognises those young individuals who have overcome personal challenges with courage and dignity. Mariam Getachew has learned two new languages from scratch since arriving in England as an unaccompanied Asylum Seeker.

Despite having to ‘learn how to learn’ Mariam has also maintained a near perfect attendence record for school and excels at extra-curricular activities, including running and singing, which she does with bravery, strength and a great attitude.

Youth Group of the Year Award

Groups nominated for this award will have worked together to achieve positive change for their community. Youth Group of the Year was awarded to Shelthorpe Youth Club for the support they showed each other during a positive peer challenge of behaviour and attitudes.

Youth Club members continue to participate in work focussing on respect and valuing others; they are keen to learn, support each other and have developed a real sense of teamwork and friendship.  

The Special Commendation Award

The Youth Councillors argued until the early hours of the morning about who the Overall Pride of Charnwood Award winner should be and for the first time decided to award a Special Commendation Award to an exceptional individual, Shane Tett.

Shane has demonstrated amazing strength of character, going from being very withdrawn with extremely low confidence to making such progress both academically and personally that it was the highlight of the year for their former Learning Support Assistant. 

The Overall Pride of Charnwood Award

The Overall Pride of Charnwood Award is for the person or persons which the Youth Council feel have been the most outstanding across all the nominees. This acheivement was awarded to Megan Taylor for her continued determination and tenacity towards becoming a respected and competent childcare practitioner.

Megan was awarded the same position at last year's awards for her work at Steps Conductive Education Centre in Shepshed. Since then, Megan has completed her traineeship programme and is due to complete a Level 2 Childcare Apprenticeship over the next few months, with hopes to progress on to a Level 3 course.