Clare Fardell Young Volunteer Award

The 2024 awards

At our Summer Award Lunch on 11 June, we presented the Clare Fardell Young Volunteer Award to two young volunteers.

Riley Rees

Riley is a member of the young volunteer and youth empowerment groups at JIGSAW Thornbury. Through these groups he has been involved in volunteering, fundraising and raising awareness of JIGSAW’s cause in the local community. He has achieved this through participating in the rotary swimarathon, sponsored walks, golf days, helping in the JIGSAW community café, attending the launch of the Thornbury Town Council youth survey on behalf of JIGSAW and filming impact videos for JIGSAW’s stakeholders and funders. He has also recently been awarded the Lions young leader in service bronze award for his commitment of over 30 hours of volunteering in the local community.

JIGSAW is immensely proud of Riley, seeing him develop into a conscientious, thoughtful and caring young man. His confidence has gone from strength to strength as he continues to advocate and empower other young people with additional needs or disabilities. We thank him for being an amazing support and fierce friend of JIGSAW Thornbury.

Lucy-Anne Nelmes

Lucy-Anne bakes for the Over 60s Tearoom every month and has done so since she started volunteering three years ago at the age of 15. We are impressed with her dedication. It is so lovely to think that a young person is willing to give up their time to help others.

It came about when the Tearoom chairperson was seated with Lucy-Anne’s family at a wedding reception. Her love for baking came up but how it was hard for the family to eat all the cakes. When she learnt that homemade cakes went down well in the Tearoom the association was born. Every third Monday of the month she bakes and delivers a cake to one of the Tearoom volunteers on her way to school. Lucy-Anne has kindly offered to make one of the birthday cakes to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the founding of the Tearoom.

Lucy-Anne will be leaving school soon, so we are not sure if her future plans will allow her to continue baking for the Tearooom, but the Tearooom is extremely grateful for all the time she has devoted to it and to her family who have supported her with volunteering.

The 2023 award

Mike Rogers received this year’s award at our Celebration Lunch on 7 June 2023.

Mike Rogers was nominated by the Krunch South West youth club team, for whom he has been a member since he was 11. A couple of years ago he expressed an interest in volunteering, wanting to give something back to the group that supported him. Since then Mike has been volunteering at both the younger and older youth clubs where he supports young people in a variety of ways.

Mike has become a valuable member of the Krunch team, setting up and packing down at youth club, helping at the tuck shop, cooking and coming up with ideas of activities. He is particularly good at recognising when other young people with additional needs require support and will make them feel welcome.

Mike has faced challenges of his own but this has not made him shy away from supporting others. He has always been someone the Crunch team can rely on, they can trust and a pleasure to work with.

We all wish him every success in the future.

The 2022 inaugural awards

Millie Eastaugh-Waring

Millie was a 16-year-old student when she first contacted us in May 2020 to offer her services as a volunteer in the evenings and at weekends. She was prepared to try her hand at anything. We put Millie in touch with Brain Tumour Support a local charity supporting people and their families impacted following a diagnosis of a brain tumour. She helped them with their social media accounts to help raise awareness of their work. During the school holidays she took part in an initiative run by her Hockey Club distributing daily meals to local families reliant on free school meals. At Christmas 2020 she volunteered with Sand and her team at The Swan in Thornbury wrapping Christmas gift bags for the homeless. Her volunteer work lead to her taking a domiciliary care job the following year helping clients in their homes with personal care and domestic tasks Millie is now taking her A-level exams but she continues her volunteering work with Bristol Flyerz Hockey, an organisation which helps disabled boys and girls take part in sport.

Jake Cooper

Jake is a pupil at Castle School. He has been helping Biology teacher Dave Cooke with his lessons on Wednesday mornings in Lower School. He has given talks to Year 11 pupils on the do’s and don’ts of how to revise properly for exams; these have been excellent and the students have found his tips to be extremely useful. He also produced an excellent Powerpoint presentation on how to prepare for Science exams specifically. Jake made a great impression because he described in detail how it felt to be in their position 12 months ago and gave them the benefit of his experience, telling them to not put off for tomorrow what they need to do today. Jake will be continuing his volunteering in Lower School whilst studying next year for his A levels in Biology, Psychology and English.

About the award

We inaugurated these awards in 2022 to mark the achievements of young volunteers in memory of our founder Clare Fardell.

Clare was a well known figure in the Thornbury community, serving as a town and county councillor for many years. In 1988 she became one of the founding members of Thornbury & District Volunteer Link which later became Thornbury Volunteer Centre. Clare was a member of our management committee throughout the Centre’s entire existence until her death in 2020.

Clare was immensely proud of the work of the Volunteer Centre and as a retired teacher was always trying to find ways to engage young people in volunteering. So in her memory we decided to create The Clare Fardell Young Volunteer Award. It will be presented annually to a young person who in the opinion of Thornbury Volunteer Centre has made a valuable contribution to the local community.