We looked at some Wrexham Recognition Award winners last month, and we now shine the spotlight on the other worthy winners.
Wrexham Recognition Awards Competition for 2024
The Wrexham Recognition Awards Competition for 2024 is now open! It’s easy to apply or nominate somebody. Just consider whether they have a talent or make a difference in people’s lives or the local community.
Contact them on Facebook or Instagram, fjonesinit on X or email info@fjonesinitiative.co.uk with a name, and they’ll do the rest.
Shauni Thomas
Shauni Thomas has been a part of the Caia Park community since she was born. She has played a massive role in the area’s development.
She says, “I am a very proud parent support worker within Caia, and I get to support other parents on the estate daily. It’s the most rewarding job I can think of, and I’m at the heart of Caia Park, where we try our best to make positive change and community bonds throughout the estate.”
“I have been a part of the @Caia Park Partnership Ltd since I was a teenager in youth clubs. I was able to be a part of youth forums and community work within communities for work with my late Nana. When I became a young single mum, I was a teenager and was adamant it wasn’t going to stop me from working within the community.
The Caia Park Partnership supported me as a young mum and through my five years at university. I got my degree in Youth and Community work, did my placements and volunteered in the Caia Park Partnership. I then went back to university to do my master’s degree and my PGCE while working within the Caia Park partnership.
Shea Ferron
Shea Ferron joined the Ruabon church choir at the age of 7. At 14, he joined John’s Boys Choir and has just graduated from the Institute for Contemporary Theatre in Manchester. Shea won the Musical Theatre Competition at Llangollen Musical Eisteddfod early this year and is currently on tour with John’s Boys.
He is an amazing young performer, singer and actor from Ruabon. From a very young age, he has devoted himself to sharing his love of music and drama with the wider community, regularly singing to raise money for local charities and helping people and organisations in the local area.
Throughout Covid, he organised socially distanced music nights on his street to entertain those stuck at home without family nearby. He performs as part of John’s Boys regularly and also organises his own fundraising events, as well as volunteering at the Llangollen Eisteddfod each year.
Shea truly is a special young man who has done so much for the local community for many years, always with a smile on his face and a kind word for all. He deserves recognition for all he has done and continues to do.
Well done, Shea, and good luck playing Buttons!
Woodswork CIC
Woodswork CIC started in 2000 and are a hands-on, proactive not-for-profit organisation concerned with climate change and working with local communities to provide and protect green spaces for future generations. They take on projects to manage existing woodland and green spaces and purchase land in the vicinity of Wrexham and bordering counties to plant up with trees and hedgerows and allow to re-wild.
They manage two woodlands, one off Bersham Road, Little Vownog. They hold relaxing meditation sessions in the meadow, host activities for @Dynamic, make bird boxes, work with @ysgolclywedog planting trees, and Transport for Wales to build accessible pathways along with other groups such as Jobs Growth Wales and MAPS group.
With a grant from the Welsh government, in partnership with WCBC, they are also planting tiny forests, one in Bro Alyn School, Gwersyllt, Wrexham.
They have funding for four tiny forests; other tiny forests are being planted in Gwenfro school and the land behind Borras Park Primary School and Ysgol Llan Y Pwll, making it accessible to both schools and the local community.
Volunteers can come and plant and become ‘tree keepers’.
Their work increases biodiversity and protects wildlife and existing woodland. It encourages volunteering and facilitates the use of green spaces with activities to benefit schools and communities.
If you are interested in volunteering, all the details of how to do it are on their website.
Amazing project!
The Wrexham Disabled Supporters Association
The Wrexham Disabled Supporters Association is a long-standing independent supporters association that has been running for over a decade. Fans founded it to ensure that anyone with disabilities can attend a match.
Over the years, they have taken members who use wheelchairs to Wembley, created a disability football team (now an independent body called Wrexham Inclusion), and organised the UK’s first autism-friendly football match in October 2013.
They are very proud to have helped fund the building of the wheelchair platform in the Mold Road Stand, which was opened by Lord Faulkner. More recently, they’ve been able to provide Audio Descriptive Commentary at all home games; this ensures that any fans with a visual impairment can enjoy the match via enhanced commentary.
They’ve recently purchased a defibrillator that is on the outside of the Mold Road Stand that is available not only for match day use but also for everyday usage, although that is one thing that we would be quite happy if nobody ever has to use it!
The WDSA also provide match day parking in the Wrexham University car park, ensuring that up to 60-70 cars are catered for in what is an incredibly challenging environment, but one we all thoroughly enjoy volunteering for.”
Wrexham Litter Pickers
Wrexham Litter Pickers was started in 2021 by Kelly Evans, who used to go litter-picking on her own before the pandemic. She started the Wrexham Litter Pickers Facebook group at the beginning of 2021 after posting on Wrexham Town Matters that she had collected 19 bags of rubbish on her own, even during the snow!
Over 600 Likes
This post received over 600 likes, inspiring her to set up Wrexham Litter Pickers’ Facebook page. The group now has 40 pickers and works in conjunction with the local council.
During lockdown, people were keen to join, get out and help make a difference. In the first five months, over 2,000 people joined the Facebook page. Kelly also organised for local councils and Keep Wales Tidy to donate bin bags, gloves and hoops to keep the bags open. Two local businesses, JCB and Nigel’s Blinds, donated high-vis vests.
Kelly liaised with Wrexham Council, and a system is in place for litter pickers to leave the red bin bags next to a waste bin. The council then collect them and take them to their recycling centre. If people cannot leave the bags by a bin, an email set up especially for Wrexham Litter Pickers will notify the council where to collect the rubbish.
From January 2021 to the start of December 2021, over 9,000 bags had been collected. In addition to the rubbish collected in bags, litter pickers have found car bumpers, tyres, and lawnmowers.
A Positive Impact
The scheme is having a huge positive impact on the wildlife in the area. Previously, they had been finding mice, rabbits, and hedgehogs trapped inside bottles and tins or tangled in wire.
There are currently 40 pickers actively picking. They got out daily or weekly. Kelly herself has been going in a group on Sundays on the riverbanks along the river Gwenfro in Queensway and Caia Park.
For anyone interested in joining the group, its free, anyone can join, you can pick up bin bags and equipment from DSL mobility on the Holt Road and the Keep Wales Tidy hubs, located around Wrexham, such as Caia Park Partnership, Plas Madoc and Alyn Waters.
22,465 Bags of Litter!
Wrexham Recognition were very impressed with Kelly’s actions during lockdown and with how she set up a project that is having a positive impact on people’s lives, the environment, and wildlife.
Kelly says, “We have picked 22,465 bags since Feb 2021! This is up to the end of February this year. We have about 45-50 people actively picking each month at the moment, either in the Sunday group picks or by themselves. The page has 2286 members currently. We have picked 389 bags from the green spaces within Caia Park during the past year.”
We hope you enjoyed reading More Wrexham Recognition Award Winners. Read more about last year’s Wrexham Recognition Awards here.
