Clare Fardell Awards
The 2025 award
At our Summer Award Lunch on 11 June 2025, we presented the Clare Fardell Young Volunteer Award to Kinsley Hawkesford.
Kinsley volunteers for Thornbury Parkrun. Like many community enterprises, Parkrun needs volunteers to function and indeed volunteering is a key aspect of its operation. She is among dozens of young people who have volunteered for it in recent years, many of them – like her – as part of their Duke of Edinburgh Award.
Kinsley has stood out and the Run Directors at Thornbury Parkrun unhesitatingly put her forward for this award. As a runner herself she was keen to support others and was always polite and communicative. As well as the more straightforward volunteer roles, such as marshal, barcode scanner and timekeeper, she also took on the Run Director’s role of greeting and briefing other volunteers as they arrived. Rather more dauntingly, she delivered the runners’ brief to all the participants before the start – over 80 of them on that day.
Even more than that, Kinsley always gave the impression of a genuine willingness to volunteer, rather than it just being something she had to do as part of her Duke of Edinburgh Award. Every community benefits from those who willingly give their time and energy for a greater good – those who give their time, rather than give up their time.
Previous awards
2024: Riley Rees & Lucy-Anne Nelmes 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.
