Vote for your Volunteer of the Year

Nominee 1: Alison Hollinrake

Read Easy Merseyside

Alison works as a voluntary reading coach in Sefton, teaching adults who may have had a poor experience learning to read at school, this could be due to dyslexia or other reasons.

Alison has worked tirelessly with her reader, who works full time as a supermarket delivery driver, who wanted to access help to support him to learn to read using the Read Easy programme, which takes 18 months to complete.

Despite working full time, Alison continues to meet with her reader twice a week during this time. They meet in a supermarket café, both on their way to work.

With Alison’s help the reader has made excellent progress working through the programme, which is now in its final stage with his graduation planned for mid-summer. This is excellent progress given they both work full time.

The reader’s ambition is to complete the entire series of Harry Potter books, which he has started to do with Alisons help!

Alison has gone way beyond what is expected of a volunteer reading coach, she has helped the reader gain confidence in tasks, and made a massive difference to help him take important steps not only to read but to change his life. A brief list of examples include:

• being able to read to his son for the first time!
• helping with everyday correspondence and household bills.
• choosing a birthday and Valentine’s card for his wife for the first time and being able to read them!
• to gain confidence at work, now being able to read documents and join in Teams/Zoom calls, he has recently been promoted to work in the office!
• being able to read car parking information!

All this has made a massive impact on not only his but his family life! Alison’s dedication, help and support has been fundamental to this!

Alison has also played a key role in promoting not only Read Easy Merseyside but the organisation nationally. This includes:

• speaking at the Read Easy national conference;
• attending recruitment events to promote the group/organisation;
• sharing her and her readers story during an interview on Radio Merseyside
• being interviewed on BBC Northwest TV local news, this is again with her reader
• being interviewed for Read Easy promotional articles
• being featured in press releases, newspaper articles, feature pieces and on social media.

This work has really helped the Merseyside group grow and gain recognition of what we do both nationally and within the group area. It has really helped us in reaching our target of twenty-five matched reading pairs within three years (excellent progress given that we are all volunteers!)

Alison is an outstanding reading coach showing dedication and commitment to helping others. She continues to volunteer with us as a reading coach and has recently been appointed to an additional mentor/coordinator role to help other readers and coaches with their reading journey.

Nominee 2: Caitlin Tarrington

Parkhaven Trust

Caitlin has an aura of calmness around her and is so kind and patient with residents, building lovely relationships. Supporting our elderly residents, many of whom have dementia.  

Nominee 3: Colin Dryden

Read Easy Merseyside

Colin is a voluntary reading coach with Read Easy Merseyside in Sefton, teaching adults who may have had a poor experience learning to read at school, this could be due to dyslexia or other reasons.

Colin has worked tirelessly with his reader, an ambulance driver, who wanted to access help to support him to learn to read using the Read Easy programme online.

The programme takes 18 months to complete, and Colin met with his reader twice a week during this time.

The reader completed the program but still lacked confidence to take any further steps. So, Colin volunteered to continue working with his reader for several months, reading articles from newspapers, information to do with his work, application forms and other forms of written literature in the general sense. Colin even tutored him on holiday using his iPad, working around Gary’s unpredictable and changing schedule, and kept slowly step by step, moving him forwards until Gary is now ready to graduate and take the next steps on his own. This is way beyond what is expected of a reading coach.

Colin is an outstanding reading coach, showing dedication and commitment to helping others. He continues to volunteer with other readers to take those first tentative steps.

Nominee 4: Colum Leggett

Liverpool Seafarers Centre

Seafarers are the silent workforce who slip in and out of our ports often unnoticed, ensuring that our essential and luxury items are stocked, all of which we take for granted, without a thought as to how they arrived on our shores, with over 95% of all goods arriving on our shores by sea.

Colum helps provide a dedicated service to Seafarers visiting the Port of Liverpool ensuring their individual welfare need is met. This is through visiting crew on board the vessel, offering transport to places of interest away from the vessel, conversation with someone who is not a member of the crew compliment at time when others will be relaxing at home after a long day of employment.

Attending initially on two 5 hour sessions per week, now reduced to one 5 hour session as the volunteer pool has increased post covid – Colum has continued to offer his service for over 25 years of service wishing to pay back to an industry which has given him so much pleasure.

Colum himself reached the pinicle of his career qualifying as a ship’s Captain. Continuing in this role in encouraging others to follow, Colum is currently overseeing the oral examinations for those who wish to progress their career at sea, through his employment with the Department of Transport, Maritime Section, MCA.

Nominee 5: David Jenkins

Sean’s Place

On the day that the Covid-19 lockdown was announced, David arrived at Sean’s Place unnanounced to gift us with two beautiful acoustic guitars. The kindness of this stranger was so poignant as that day some of the members here used these guitars to sing together not knowing when they would be seeing one another again.

Then low and behold when lockdown was lifted, the lovely David came back to us saying that he would be happy to volunteer with us in his spare time.

Since this David comes to Sean’s Place on a Monday and other days when he can to support our members in our social drop in sessions. David has a particularly nurturing nature and has a magical way of making newer members of the service feel welcomed and safe and he has such a gentle nature that he manages to make everyone feel very at ease.

David has had some difficulties himself as he has suffered from a brain injury which effects David on a day to day, but instead of this creating barriers, David uses his lived experience to support our members here. David is such an asset to our service and we feel very lucky to have him on the team.

Nominee 6: Denise Bowden

Sean’s Place

Denise has been supporting our members at Sean’s Place from the early days of Sean’s Place being open.

Denise dedicates so much of her life to helping others and is not just a volunteer with us but also a foster parent and we are always in awe of the fact that she can give 100% to not just her family, but the men who access our service.

Denise is our in house welcome wagon who can meet anyone from every walk of life and manage to strike up conversation and find a common ground, making everyone here feel welcomed and valued.

This unque skills coupled with Denise’s bubbly and hilarious sense of humour makes her an absolute hit with our guys. She really is the Mother Hen of Sean’s Place and we would be lost without her!

Nominee 7: Hannah Duffy

Friends of Alexandra and Coronation Parks

In recent years, Coronation Park in Crosby has faced challenges including a worn-out play area, a neglected boating lake and issues with anti-social behaviour. However, thanks to the dedicated efforts of the Friends group, positive changes are underway to revitalize the park for the local community.

One member of the Friend’s group – Hannah Duffy has been at the forefront of the park’s transformation through her leadership in the Playground Project.

In the last twelve months, as well as juggling work, family responsibilities and involvement in her children’s school PTA, Hannah has tirelessly devoted herself to the parks Playground Project. Her unwavering determination and passion have driven her to:

• Engage (on many occasions) with the local community to gather feedback on proposed playground plans.
• Promote awareness of the Playground Project and upcoming fundraising events. Setting up a Web page, Instagram account and Just Giving Page. Linking with local businesses via face to face meetings and Social Media.
• Coordinate Family Fun days in the park with support from local businesses.
• Collaborate closely with Green Sefton Managers to ensure project alignment.
• Pursue grant opportunities for playground equipment.
• Collaborate with Valewood Primary School to gather student input on playground design and inclusive play equipment.
• Assist in the Friends group’s monthly Saturday Gardening sessions, involving children and families in gardening activities, litter picking and bench painting.

Thanks to Hannah’s dedication, Phase 1 of Coronation Park’s Playground Project has been successfully completed at a cost of over £50,000.  She is already actively fundraising for Phase 2, continuing to make positive strides towards enhancing the park for all.

Nominee 8: Isobel Dace

Parkhaven Trust

Isobel is an outstanding volunteer. Always full of enthusiasm, great at meeting the resident’s needs, building relationships and full of self-motivation. Supporting our elderly residents, many of whom have dementia.

Nominee 9: Janette Stancombe

Regenerus and St Leonard’s Youth and Community Centre

Jan has been volunteering on Bootle based environmental projects since 2018 – starting her gardening journey at St Leonard’s Youth & Community Centre where she has been a committed volunteer gardener for 6 years.

She has the magic touch with plants and a warm and welcoming nature with all people.

In addition to St Leonard’s, she has helped to create 3 show gardens at the RHS Flower Show at Tatton Park (2 gold medal/1 silver gilt) and has joined in with regular meadow making and gleaning (harvesting excess produce from local farms) for the South Sefton Foodbank. She is a true local ambassador for urban greening and volunteering!

She is also a volunteer community board member at Regenerus – a local social enterprise / charity based on Stanley Road in Bootle, ensuring her lived experience as a local resident is shared in various levels and sectors.

She also regularly volunteers to cook breakfast for the congregation at St Leonard’s, and waters plants in the centre polytunnel at weekends so that everyone’s efforts survive between gardening sessions on Wednesdays! She is the most active pensioner I know  – always up for a laugh and having a go. Her confidence in the environmental projects inspires others and without her even realising, she brings / retains new volunteers into the garden through her skill sharing, life stories and anecdotes.

Nominee 10: Jean Lilley

Galloways

Jean organises and runs a weekly service user led community group called ‘Eye 2 Eye’ in Southport for people affected by sight loss.

Jean has worked tirelessly and often at times against the odds to fill the year with talks from local organisations as well as bingo and other activities. Jean does not let her sight loss get in the way of her ambitions and has shown real tenacity to keep the group running no matter what.

Nominee 11: John Taylor

Cat’s Protection

For always going above and beyond with transporting cats in need for various appointments. John also campaigns for responsible cat ownership for our neutering and microchip scheme and is always on hand to ensure he can help out and volunteer at events, spreading awareness in Sefton and beyond for our feline furry friends.

Nominee 12: Keith Rushton

Cancer Research UK

Keith is celebrating 20 years volunteering with Cancer Research UK. He had lost his mother sadly to Cancer and wanted to do something to help find a cure. Keith decided that he would volunteer at Race For Life and along with two others, he became actively involved in Course set up.  They became known as the Three Amigo’s!  The events were managed by a CRUK event manager, but everything else was managed and organised by a dedicated group of volunteers.

Keith became a key volunteer in Course set up. He would attend approximately 8 – 10 Race For Life events including his local event at Aintree Racecourse and would be a key person in the set up of courses often using his own vehicle for this purpose on quite a rough terrain. Keith became an expert on many of the course setups required in the North West in particular our Aintree course route and happily shared and supported CRUK Event Managers with local knowledge to support the event in finding volunteers to tricky parts of the course where we would need more support. Keith never asks for anything, no expenses, no payments at all. Everything he does for the charity is all towards finding a cure for cancer.

Keith can often be found on an event site at 5am supporting the Event Manager in setting up the course and getting the event site ready to welcome participants. He is there all day and would then see the derig of the course, right the way though to the van being packed and leaving site, some shifts are often over 15 hours in length.

Keith also became involved in the Shine night walks, in particular our Liverpool Shine Night Walk and he sets up and back marks these events which take place in city centres. He has back marked Marathon events at London, Manchester and also Glasgow.  Keith is a dedicated volunteer who has given everything and continues to give everything to find a cure and has been a huge support to CRUK staff over the years by sharing his knowledge and support and being a key volunteer on even set up and event days.

Nominee 13: Kevin Dunne

Stem Cell Scousers

Marvellous Kevin Dunne, founder, in 2015, of STEMCELLSCOUSERS, is a pocket-sized force of nature. He is a great guy who, despite his own health issues, works tirelessly, standing for hours at a time, in draughty supermarket foyers, organising numerous events to, raise money, increase awareness of and the symptoms of, Blood Cancer whilst highlighting the huge shortage of Stem Cell donors Worldwide.

In 2014 his lovely wife Mary, was saved from certain death after four rounds of chemotherapy and multiple blood transfusions, when The Anthony Nolan Trust found her the only matching donor in the world!

Kevin is consequently now totally dedicated to helping people with blood cancer as tragically, Kevin’s mum died of Leukaemia when he was only eight years old and his brother Tony, recently died despite Kevin donating stem cells to him in 2015.

Kevin is indomitable, resourceful, and determined, constantly thinking of new ways to raise money, enlisting local music groups to play at his collection points to help ‘swell the coffers,’ whether that be in pubs, shops, street collections or fashion shows. Kevin uses his astute marketing background to get the very best raffle /auction donations from local businesses and Liverpool and Everton football clubs. He currently has signed Shirts from both Liverpool, and Everton football clubs to raffle in aid of the Anthony Nolan Charity. He frequently appears on local radio to promote this vitally important, lifesaving cause,

This year Kevin has taken on the daunting task of organising a Summer Fete and Music Festival at Formby pool gardens on the 3rd. August. He has enlisted the support of 10 local bands and a choir to provide live music for seven hours.

Kevin has recently been informed by BBC Radio Merseyside that he is shortlisted for their “MAKE A DIFFERENCE AWARDS” Kevin, Mary, and their son Chris, set out to raise £100,000. To date he has achieved £74,600 of that total. He has recruited 496 new potentially lifesaving donors.He has donated £49,900 to Anthony Nolan enabling them to fund 1247 new donors!

He truly makes a difference!

Nominee 14: Laura Minard

Sean’s Place

Laura has been volunteering with Sean’s Place from the early days of when the service began.

Laura is a determined and hardworking lady who has a very responsible role working as a HR manager as well as volunteering for Sean’s Place and volunteering for various other charities including those helping people who are homeless.

Laura volunteers at our Friday night Coffee and Connect drop in sessions after finishing a long and often stressful week in her day to day job.

All of the lads that attend these sessions rely on Laura as they have built up a special relationship with her and whether they need a listening ear or just a cuppa, Laura knows them well enough to be able to respond to this.

Laura is also a very special lady that we rely on for any events that we put on for our members and for the local community-she will always give up her time for the service and turn her hand to absolutely anything that can be done to help-the service would not be the same without her. Thank you Laura.

Nominee 15: Lynn Hogg

The Wildlife Trust for Lancashire, Manchester and North Merseyside

Lynn has volunteered for the Lancashire Wildlife Trust for 18 years and is involved in several of the Merseyside projects.

This includes supporting the team at Freshfield Dune Heath with livestock lookering; helping with awareness and fundraising events; and recently creating educational resources for the Lunt Meadows project.

Her humble approach to volunteering is truly admirable; she is selfless in her contributions and always has an uplifiting, positive attitude. Notably, her dedication to fundraising for the red squirrel project has been an asset.

Lynn is a talented knitter who co-runs a volunteer-led Etsy shop to help raise money for red squirrel conservation efforts – in fact, her creations are so sought after that she sometimes has to close the shop due to high demand! The Merseyside Team are very grateful for all of Lynn’s hard work, and we would love for her to receive this award in acknowledgement of this!

Nominee 16: Mary Daly

Cancer Navigators

Mary joined our team as a volunteer group facilitator for the Navigating Cancer Together (NCT) Support Group which meets every Wednesday at the Seaforth Family Wellbeing Centre.

Mary has been a part of our team since November 2023 and has supported over 30 people living with cancer to attend and be welcomed into the support group.

Mary immediately fit in with the group and has provided support, reassurance and a very warm welcome to the group members and to the Cancer Navigators. By providing regular weekly support for the group it has meant the Cancer Navigators have been able to reach more people needing help and support who are living with a cancer diagnosis in south Sefton.

Mary has also supported with events for the group including Easter crafts, a Christmas Party and a Christmas meal. The Cancer Navigator team and the Navigating Cancer Together group feel incredibly lucky to have Mary who donates her time and her kindness freely to us.

Members of the support group showed their gratuity to Mary with some comments:

“Mary is a really beautiful person inside and out. She is really friendly and warm. When I received some bad news she was there to listen to me and put my mind at ease and gave me some advice which was really helpful. And she never lets your cup run empty! Thank you Mary, we are lucky to have you as part of our group”.

Nominee 17: Phil Boggan

Parkhaven Trust

Philip brings joy and happiness through the time he gives playing his piano to residents at Parkhaven Trust,  we feel lucky to have him with us. Supporting our elderly residents, many of whom have dementia.

Nominee 18: Sally Christopher

Homestart Southport & Formby

Sally became a volunteer in 2014, she has supported 11 families in that time as well as supporting group settings. Sally has given 670 hours of her own time to the voluntary sector.

Sally has great empathy and warmth and has stayed in touch with a lot of families she has supported in the past as they feel she has become part of their families.

The feedback we have received from families all say how relaxed and comfortable Sally made them feel and at the lowest point in their life Sally really helped to make a huge difference.

Sally has selflessly gone out of her way to help and support the families she has worked with, accompanied them to groups, appointments, shopping. The impact on families through Sallys help has reduced isolation, improved mental health and young children to thrive through socalisation.

Sally has her own Grandchildren and a husband who is not in great health but she has still managed to give up her time every week. Attend all training sessions and be a dedicated volunteer for Home Start.

Nominee 19: Samantha Purcell

Sefton Autism Support Hub

Samantha (Sammi), is hard working and reliable, doesn’t have to be asked to get on with her work/ task. She will go the extra mile for our service users and also our volunteers. Samantha is an asset to the team and has been a delight to work with.

Samantha has mental health issues and has gone major leg operations and besides that she has continued to volunteer for us and do her best to get into work even on a bad day with her legs. 

Nominee 20: Val Cousins

Linacre Mission

Val has given exemplary service to the Tiny Steps Play Group at the Mission as a part of their community work with the local families.

Her networking within the community is very commendable. She has raised funds consistently; together with the mission and independently and has arranged numerous family days out to various places including Chester Zoo and Farmer Teds.

She has organised Christmas parties and even invited older siblings to attend if they are not in school. She has an ‘all inclusive’ approach in all that she does, she doesn’t like anyone to miss out. She is very caring of the families and childminders that attend the group and especially supportive to the volunteers who help with the setting up for each session.

Val will be greatly missed when she retires in September this year after 35 years of dedication and love for her local community. 

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