Community Awards

BOVEY TRACEY TOWN COUNCIL COMMUNITY AWARDS 2023

The council was pleased to confirm the recipients of the 2023awards announced at the Annual Town Meeting in May 2023.

YOUNG CITIZEN AWARD - JAZ SAUNDERS

Jaz saunders’ nomination has come from the head and a lead staff member at the greater horseshoe school in heathfield. If you don’t know the school, it is an independent school for children with complex needs and is situated close to the red phone booth off accommodation lane in heathfield (little bovey).

Jaz is a member of the school council that meets to discuss school life and allow the voices of younger pupils to reach the senior leadership team, jaz is active in this leading on planning and delivery of year end celebrations for older students and eco-actions for reducing environmental impact in order to earn the eco-schools geen flag award.

Jaz raises awareness across the school of allergies and dietary needs, helping ordering grocery shopping for the school to ensure dietary needs are met for students and staff.

Jaz supports the personal relations, sex and health education team, being a student voice on gender issues and opening oportunities for these things to be discussed by students to help with recognising how they identify.

Jaz is an enthusiastic horse rider and is supporting a younger student to learn and progress their horse riding.

In terms of the wider community, jaz has helped raise money for charities, designing and making christmas cards for the school to sell to chosen charities (last year the mare & foal sanctuary) raising over £100.

She has also helped a staff member collect stationery donations to pass on to a volunteer delivering education to ukrainian refugees.

COMMUNITY CHAMPION AWARD - RUTH DIXON and SUE PRICE

The bovey tracey community fridge (situated beside the methodist church) had been planned for some time to help those in need in these difficult financial times, with the help and support of many people. But Ruth and Sue made it happen.

They worked tirelessly on a voluntary basis to reduce the waste of good food that may otherwise be thrown away. It is open to everyone to take food away from or put food in. They have recruited and encouraged volunteers, accessed food supplies and promoted use of the fridge when it is full.

This not only helps families across our parish but addresses the environmental issue of throwing good food away. This joint award recognises the good work they have both put in for the benefit of our community.

ENVIRONMENTAL CHAMPION AWARD - SUE SIMMONS

Sue has been beavering away behind the scenes involved in many of bovey’s environmental initiatives for some years now and is responsible for communications for the bovey & heathfield climate emergency group.

Sue is known to be a very modest person and will credit everybody else for the activities she has been running with: plastic free bovey, spring & autumn litter picks, assisting the community fridge and repair café come into fruition, while chairing cebh core group meetings.

Sue is a person that makes things happen, and without people like her, we wouldn’t be in the strong position we are in caring for our natural environment.

Sue also adopts a personal lifestyle that shows how much she believes in the dangers of climate breakdown and is a model example for us to follow.

Sue is a very fitting winner of this award, which is a way of us all saying thank you for what she does for our community.

HONORARY REPRESENTATIVE OF THE LORD OF THE MANOR OF BOVEY TRACEY - MARK BAILEY

Many may have seen and heard mark reading out from the war memorial on remembrance sundays names of the fallen in two world wars with a short biography of each.

Mark researched the names of those on the war memorial (and others not commemorated) and published his book “smitten down yet not destroyed” in 2016 through the bovey heritage trust. Mark has carried out work in identifying eleven war memorials in the town and has produced a booklet “remembrance ramble” for a guided walk around their locations. In line with council policy, mark now assists in the naming of all new roads in the town based on the names of casualties from world war one. There is much more that i could say about mark’s activities relating to this, including that mark is now an accredited speaker for the war graves commission.

But this is not all.

He was an original member of bovey climate action, led on the big switch to get people to change energy producers to ecotricity, some of the commission of which was used to install solar hot water panels for heating bovey swimming pool.

He organised the bovey acoustic café in the church rooms which raised thousands of pounds for charities like devon wildlife trust and theworld land trust for their environmental projects.

Mark is a champion of recycling. I’m told he never goes out without a bag to put in for recycling rubbish he finds. As a member of the datrtmoor society he organised car sharing to reduce use of cars going to events and outings.

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