Joint national winners for Keep Britain Tidy Awards

At the recent Keep Britain Tidy Awards, young people from Goole and Altrincham scooped national awards for their achievements and contribution to their community. 

The Sobriety project in Goole carried out initiatives to improve the local area including maintaining and planting flower beds at the train station, donating planters and hanging baskets to the community, working on the community allotment and creating a wildlife pond on a local nature reserve. Two young people from G-Force project in Altrincham set up ‘Evergreen Gardening Services;’ to offer basic gardening maintenance at a reasonable price to residents that find it difficult to look after their gardens themselves, such as elderly or disabled residents.

The Sobriety and G-Force projects are part of the Community Space Challenge programme, which is funded by the Big Lottery and managed by Catch22, helping young people to identify run down and neglected spaces within their community and to take action to make them cleaner, greener and available for the whole community to enjoy.

David Hopkins, National Programme Manager, Community Space Challenge, Catch22 says:

'The young people involved in these projects have been awarded for the significant and valuable contribution they have made to their community and for their great pride and determination in what they do. It is a wonderful achievement for to receive such important recognition from this award.'

Phil Barton, Chief Executive, Keep Britain Tidy says:

'All the young people involved in these projects have shown real commitment and determination to improving both their local environments and local communities.

By bringing together different sections of the community, these schemes have helped to strengthen relationships between local residents and the young people involved. They are a real inspiration to us all.'

The projects were nominated for Keep Britain Tidy’s Community Space Challenge award for the difference it had made to the community, and were announced joint winners on Tuesday March 13th in Birmingham.