Our first NCLB #Awards on January 23rd 2020 was the culmination of year of fantastic projects, exemplary partnership working and enthusiastic, passionate children and young people!
With a town hall filled with organisations that tirelessly deliver brilliant projects benefitting young people and their families AND the young people themselves (as well as a few distinguished gests) the atmosphere was absolutely buzzing, even before the very charming hosts took the stage – BBC Radio Gloucestershire’s Nicky Price and singer Camilla Lewington!
As 2019, our year of action, drew to a close we started to collect in the nominations and were quickly blown away at the sheer amount of incredible projects and initiatives taking place across the whole of the county. These nominated projects were whittled down to a shortlist by our panel of professionals who fully understand the importance of working closely with children and families and how this benefits not only them, but the whole town.
The Judges:
Dame Janet Trotter, chair of Child Friendly Gloucestershire; Chris Spencer, Director of Children’s Services for Gloucestershire; Martin Surl, Police and Crime Commissioner, and Roger Whyborn, Mayor of Cheltenham.
Once their job was done, we had a very inspiring list of finalists to choose from. All we can say is thank goodness it wasn’t up to us! The hard task of picking a winner then fell to the Gloucestershire County Council ambassadors for vulnerable children and young people – Demi, Eliza and Henry. After reading about all the finalists, and using their own lived experience to influence their decisions, the winners were chosen….
*****Drum roll*****
The winners:
#Our Town KeepCheltWarm (Cheltenham Borough Homes)
#Positive Relationships The Aston Project (Gloucestershire Constabulary)
#ConfidentGirls Youth Mentors (Cheltenham Borough Homes)
#StrongFamilies St Pauls ACEs Pilot (Cheltenham Borough Homes)
#Celebrating Childhood My Park (Play Gloucestershire)
#AmbitiousCareers The Cornerstone Centre (St Michael’s Cornerstone Trust)
#PhysicallyActive Health and Wellbeing project (Move More)
#FunandFulfilment HALT Project (Gloucestershire Animal Welfare Association & Cheltenham Animal Shelter)
#InnovativeEducation Cheltenham Library (Gloucestershire County Council)
#GoodMentalHealth MenTalk/GirlTalk (Cheltenham Town FC)
#AchievingBoys The Rock
#EatingWell Make Lunch (The Rock)
The night:
The town hall looked glorious and we were kept entertained by Oakwood School Samba band and BTEC Performing Arts students from Stagedoor Learning.
A good time was had by all, with fun games and activities such as inflatable darts, a magic selfie mirror and a VERY popular sweet cart provided by sponsors AllAboutFunUK.com. The delicious buffet was devoured with many going back for seconds (don’t worry, we did manage to grab ourselves a couple of the yummy cake and brownie bites to keep our energy up!).
We were thrilled to see so many of the organisations being celebrated show up and bring along the young people they worked with, they were the heart and soul of the night.
Thanks to our sponsors who made the night not just possible, but thoroughly enjoyable:
The Cheltenham Trust, Cheltenham BID, Production AV, Sorted Global ltd, Elliot Oliver estate agents, Paul Baker insurance services, Stowe Family Law, Tidal Training Direct Ltd, Northrop Grumman and AllAboutFunUK.com
