Community-based campaign, Live Here Love Here honoured eight environmental heroes from across Northern Ireland at its recent Community Volunteer Awards event. Held on 23rd March, the hybrid event was hosted virtually by UTV’s Joe Mahon.
The awards were open to individuals, schools and community groups that undertake volunteer activities to tackle litter, improve shared spaces and help reduce the impact of climate change. Nominations were also open to businesses that are registered through the Adopt a Spot programme.
Tidy Randalstown’s Helen Boyd received the Civic Pride award, while Springhill Community House’s Ciaran Cahill won the award for Health and Wellbeing. The Big Transformation award was given to Larne Eco Rangers whilst Handy Helpers’ Lucia Kearney took home the gong for Connecting Communities.
Live Here Love Here Community Volunteer Awards
Other categories included the Hidden Gem award, which was given to Claire Hassan and the Biodiversity Champion award which went to Creggan Country Park. Edward Campbell was the recipient of the Adopt a Spot award, whilst the Spirit of Live Here Love Here award was picked up by Killyleagh Community Association’s Lindsey Armstrong.
Each of the winning volunteers or groups supported their community in 2021 by instilling civic pride and tackling environmental issues such as litter, biodiversity loss and pollution.
Live Here Love Here’s Manager Helen Tomb commented: “We selected some very worthy winners for this year’s awards and are proud to recognize their year-round efforts to improve our environment.
“This year’s Live Here Love Here Community Volunteer Awards event allowed us to celebrate the vast difference that these people make to their communities by tackling important issues like biodiversity and littering.”
Winner, Lindsey Armstrong of Killyleagh Community Association, said, “Live here Love here have been fantastic to work with. We’ve been awarded Pollinator Grants, they’ve supported us with our litter picking campaigns and we’ve recently been awarded a Marine Litter grant of £16,00 to buy twenty six new bins for Killyleagh.
“Ten to twenty of our volunteers meet up every Sunday morning to litter pick around the town and along the seafront and have collected one ton of litter in five months. This has been really well supported by Live Here Love who provided us with litter pickers, bags and high vis jackets.”
The event also celebrated the launch of Keep Northern Ireland Beautiful’s Carbon Literacy for Community Leaders training. This accredited training programme will support communities to take action on climate change by learning more about the role of carbon in the climate emergency and the steps they can take to become part of the solution
The Carbon Literacy Programmes are delivered in partnership with the registered charity, the Carbon Literacy Project. To book a place on one of the training courses please visit:
https://www.keepnorthernirelandbeautiful.org/carbonliteracy
If you are interested in finding out further information about the Carbon Literacy accredited programmes and/or the Open College Network GCSE ‘Reducing Carbon Footprints Through Environmental Action’ please email [email protected] or [email protected]
