Clare Fardell Awards
The 2024 awards
At our Summer Award Lunch on 11 June 2024, 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.
Previous awards
2023: Mike Rogers 2022: Millie Eastaugh-Waring & Jake Cooper
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 one or more young people who in the opinion of Thornbury Volunteer Centre have made a valuable contribution to the local community.
