V involved award ceremony winners

Helen Johnson Volunteer of the Year

From the time Helen arrived in Leeds she has dedicated much of her time to volunteering. She is the International, National and Extreme Events organiser for RAG. I’ve a list here of all the events Helen has organised – 3 charity hitchhikes, a sponsored bike ride from Leeds to Paris, the RAG firewalk, three international volunteering projects, a charity skydive and the RAG jailbreak…… Together these events raised over £50,000. This is clearly not enough for Helen however as she also spent the last two summers in Uganda working with a charity organisation and this summer will be in Thailand to help out in an orphanage.

Nicola Kober – Ralph Thoresby School

Nicola has volunteered through the University Access Academy previously and has also worked as a student host. This year she created her own project R:Edit with 10-15, Year 7 pupils in an after school club. The project involved the group editing an unpublished short story for Barrington Stoke who specialise in producing books for reluctant and struggling readers. The group edited and proposed changes to the script which was then returned to the publisher. Each child involved will be named on the inside sleeve and receive a copy to keep. The school pointed out that the scheme was‘brilliant’ and there was a noticeable difference in the confidence of the children in reading aloud.

Tom Gill

Tom Gill has probably given more volunteer hours than is healthy!’ and ‘Whenever I am in the office, Tom seems to be too – he’s constantly organising!’ With this unhealthy amount of volunteering time Tom has run two of Action’s largest projects; ‘Reach’ which is a residential project for children from disadvantaged backgrounds and ‘Outdoor Mix’ which is a residential project for children with disabilities. Tom also set up the Christmas Present Project which involved fundraising, buying and wrapping over 100 presents for disadvantaged local children – even dressing as Santa to give them away. Tom has also set up the East Africa Playgrounds charity following a trip he undertook to build a playground inTanzania. Through this Tom has raised over £2,000 and has recruited 8 volunteers..