NW Masters 2013: Vote for your community champion
A LEADING businessman and two North West charities, one long-established and the other recently-launched, have been shortlisted for the Pride award at TheBusinessDesk.com’s 2012 Business Masters Awards.
The North West Pride award, which recognises the outstanding contribution to local communities by business or individuals, will be announced at a unique awards lunch at the Lowry Hotel in Salford on April 25.
The three finalists, whose good work will be showcased at the event, are: Forever Manchester, lawyer Maurice Watkins and Reuben’s Retreat.
Forever Manchester, led by chief executive Nick Massey, is a community foundation – a charity dedicated to strengthening Greater Manchester communities, creating opportunities and tackling issues of disadvantage and exclusion.
Last year the organisation delivered £2.7m to around 670 community groups, benefiting more than 220,000 residents. Fulfilling its commitment to work with the most challenged communities, 64% of funding reached 30% of the most deprived neighbourhoods.
Forever Manchester has pioneered a new stream of funding for the charity sector – asset-based community development, which it describes as a “ground-breaking model” of engaging with residents in local neighbourhoods to deliver meaningful projects that they have identified and helped to deliver.
The organisation has 15 staff, a volunteer force of more than 150 people, and has built an endowment of £7m ensuring future sustainability.
In his day job with North West law firm Brabners Chaffe Street Maurice Watkins
is one of the UK’s leading sports lawyers and until last year had served on the board of Manchester United FC for 28 years.
The nomination for the Pride award, comes not for this, but for his support to numerous good causes around the region.
He chaired Central Manchester NHS Foundation Trust’s New Children’s Hospital Appeal, which raised £20m, and earned him a CBE in 2011. The appeal funded state-of-the-art equipment and parental accommodation facilities for the North West’s largest single-site children’s hospital.
He is currently chairman of Breakthrough Breast Cancer North West Appeal and leading a campaign to raise £5m to bring a world-class team of scientists to the region, with the aim of finding new treatments for the disease.
In total Mr Watkins, who is also chairman of governors at Manchester Grammar School and a trustee of the Retired Greyhound Trust and Professional Footballers Pension Scheme, has helped raise £50m for charitable causes in the region.
Reuben’s Retreat is a North West charity born out of a Tameside family’s tragic loss of their little boy at 23 months old.
Founded by bereaved mother Nicola Graham from Mottram, Tameside in August 2012, Reuben’s Retreat plans to open a facility in the region where families who have children with life-limiting or life-threatening illnesses can take respite breaks and time to relax, recharge, remember and rebuild.
Reuben’s Retreat, which also plans to provide support and bereavement counselling to parents and siblings who have lost loved ones, has raised more than £270,000 in just 26 weeks. Mrs Graham has set a goal of £2m in 23 months.
She has created the brand, logo, website and merchandise, negotiated free bus banners in all Stagecoach buses in the region for three months to publicise her campaign.
Voting is now closed.
