Local Volunteers Get Recognition

Hammersmith & Fulham Volunteer Centre holds its 'Oscars'

 

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Vianna Renoud, who worked with the HFVC to organanise a volunteering challenge for 40 exchange students from California State University; the Mayor Cllr Charlie Treloggan; Cynthia Renee of the Hammersmith & Fulham Volunteer Centre; and Cllr Dame Sally Powell, holding a selection of the certificates awarded on the night.

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Over a hundred local people who give up their free time to help others have been honoured at Hammersmith Town Hall at an annual awards ceremony hosted by the Hammersmith & Fulham Volunteer Centre (HFVC).

The volunteers, who include local residents and local business people, gathered on Friday 10 June to receive certificates from the Mayor, Cllr Charlie Treloggan and Cllr Dame Sally Powell, Hammersmith & Fulham’s cabinet member for regeneration, in recognition of their commitment to the community and their desire to further themselves.

The award winners were among the 1500 people who have taken up voluntary work in the last year through the HFVC, a Hammersmith-based centre situated just off King Street on Galena Road. As well as finding volunteering placements for a range of individuals, including unemployed people, young people and the socially excluded, the HFVC organises volunteering challenges for local businesses, so that their staff can develop their teamwork skills and put something back into the neighbourhood in which they work.

Local resident Åsa Skold, from West Kensington, received an award on Friday after giving up her time to work with young people at the Masbro Centre, Masbro Road. “I’d been working from home as a textile restorer for a number of years but, with my daughter off at university, I was feeling a bit isolated and wanted to ‘get out there’ and maybe change my career,” she says. “Through the HFVC I found out about the Gingerbread-United teenagers project, and started helping out on a ten week project at the Masbro Centre encouraging young people to get active in art. I really like it - it’s a fantastic buzz to see the young people and how delighted they are when they have made something, and to work with adults who are so dedicated and show so much compassion. Gingerbread are sending me to do training and have asked me to go on the next ten-week course, plus I’m volunteering on another project in Westminster, so I’m learning a lot about youth work and, in the long term, would like to think that there will be a pay cheque for me at the end of it.”

Marion Schumann, director of the HFVC, said, “We’re delighted to be able to honour some of our dedicated and hard-working volunteers at Hammersmith Town Hall, in the presence of the Mayor and Cllr Powell, and to show them what an impact they are making on the borough. It’s especially appropriate that their efforts should be recognised this year, in the Year of the Volunteer 2005, when the government is celebrating the importance of volunteering and encouraging more people to get involved."

She hoped that more local residents and businesses will follow the example that they have set and drop in to the new centre on Galena Road to find out more about the benefits of volunteering.

The HFVC (formerly the Hammersmith & Fulham Volunteer Development Agency) is a charitable organisation which aims to promote and develop volunteering opportunities in the borough, recruit and place volunteers and develop good practice in the use of volunteers. It is based in Galena Mews, 148 King Street, and is supported by the London Development Agency, Hammersmith & Fulham council, the National Lottery’s Community Fund, Work Directions, the Corporation of London, Lloyds TSB, the Home Office Race Equality Unit and Regenasis, the borough regeneration agency.

The awards ceremony took place in the Small Hall at Hammersmith Town Hall . Also in attendance was Cllr Stephen Burke, leader of Hammersmith & Fulham council and chair of the HFVC.

June 17, 2005