DEDICATED Wee County volunteers were last week recognised at a string of awards ceremonies.

Clackmannanshire Third Sector Interface (CTSI) held its annual Volunteers' Week awards with a fresh format seeking to ensure involvement in all corners of the county.

Local awards were held in each council ward area and the week culminated in the county-wide awards at Tullibody Civic Centre on Thursday, June 9, with ward winners in the finals.

Chris Calder, of Tullibody Community Development Trust, scooped Trustee of the Year, beating other ward winners Julie Haslam, Janice Chalmers, Billy McEwan and Peter Goodsir.

Young Person of the Year went to Travis Parker from Vital Spark Racing CIC, other finalists included Lewis Aitken, Rebecca Burns, Rachel Watt, Jennifer Watt and Rosie Biggart.

Tullibody Community Garden was named Community Group of the Year ahead of other finalists RLP CraftyKids, Home-Start Clackmannanshire, Resonate Together and The Playpen Café CIC.

Colin Partington from Resonate Together picked up the award for Outstanding Individual Community Contribution, other ward winners included James Bull, Sandra Gruar, Lesley Thornton and Jessie Condie.

Christopher White, volunteer development officer at CTSI, explained how the new format allowed areas to take ownership of the awards with a variety of trusts involved in the organisation of events.

He told the Advertiser: “We went for a community approach to capitalise on what has developed over the course of the pandemic: communities became more developed and centralised themselves.

“We thought we would capitalise on that moment and we found it was very successful in that regard, we had an increased number of nominations across the board, we were also able to reach groups that we haven't necessarily reached before – they were able to take a sense of ownership over the awards process.”

Many young people were involved through Saltire Awards and the Young Person of the Year category gave recognition to those who would not traditionally be eligible for that scheme.

Chris continued: “It was a lot of work having five events plus the county-wide event, but it was worth it because we had such a positive response to it.”

The county-wide event was described as the “Champions League” for the awards with ward winners coming together at the end of the celebrations.

There were too many to thank individually, but Chris gave a nod of thanks to Duncan from Monogram Creative for his work on social media, Alexandra from The Playpen for catering at a number of events and the CTSI team.

He added: “I just want to thank the community for their engagement as well, through nominating, through attending and just through their support.

“And of course, a final thank you to all the volunteers in Clackmannanshire for what they've done over the pandemic, in recovery and as we now go forward into, hopefully, the end of the pandemic and onto brighter pastures.”