At the annual Volunteers Awards ceremony we all stood around with baited breath, waiting to see who would win this year’s Best Community Event Award.  With so many different successful community events no one was sure which would come out on top. The silence was broken and the winner of the award was announced, the hotly contested prize would be going to Emma Loghin, Sandeep Pahal, France Quirin, Rachel Turley and Sneha Rajan for their Community Health event hosted on October 21^st at the Student Christian Movement Regional Gathering Birmingham.  They went up and proudly received their hard earned certificates, secure in the knowledge that they had achieved something special.

Speaking to the successful team after the award ceremony they all pointed at Sneha and tell of how she had done the bulk of the preparation work, liaising with the Student Christian Movement to ensure the event was as effective as possible. The whole team are far too modest, for this event was two weeks in the making and it was not luck but hard work that guaranteed their message about a healthy lifestyle was so well received.

On the day of their event the popularity of their stall surprised even them and they had a steady flow of people to talk to about health issues and give advice. Four out of the Five are Community Health Champions and they confidently talked about important issues such as healthy eating and exercise. Unsurprisingly at a largely student event the people were most responsive and shocked to the facts and advice they received about alcohol consumption. At the end of the day the team were all very tired but happy at how many people they had spoke to (around 60) and how responsive they had been.

So what does the future hold for these winners of the Best Community Event Award, well Sneha has been inspired by her knowledgeable group to become a Community Health Champion herself and together they are planning future events to continue to tackle health and well being issues across Birmingham.

If you are interested in becoming a Community Health Champion and helping to transform health and well-being in your community please contact us by email at volunteer@freshwinds.org.uk or call us on 0121 415 6670