The projects have been nominated, the judging is over and the votes are in, and we can now reveal the official winners of our Building Better Communities competition.
Earlier this year, we launched the Building Better Communities competition in a bid to boost community spirit up and down the country. We asked you to enter the projects that are close to your communities’ hearts, but that are in need of a little TLC. With a chance of winning a share of £100,000 for building supplies and labour costs, you responded in your thousands.
We received over 2,000 nominations in total, including everything from community theatres and gardens to play areas and sports clubs. With such an incredible response, it took a team of 60 Jewson employees and supplier partners to narrow it down to a shortlist of 63 projects. With the help of
the public’s social media votes and some strict judging parameters, we then named just 14 fantastic projects as our competition winners.
This week, we invited our winning projects to a celebration event at the Jewson Greenworks Training Academy in Birmingham, where they found out exactly what they’d won and were awarded their prize by TV presenter and property expert, Sarah Beeny.
Taking home the top prize of £50,000 was the Penlee Lifeboat Station in Penzance, a local charity that is committed to saving lives out at sea. Last year alone, its 25 strong team of volunteers spent an outstanding 331 hours on the water and assisted the lives of 70 people.
In January this year, Penlee Lifeboat began an appeal to raise £200,000 for a new, two-storey station which would give space for a crew training room, larger changing f
acilities and a visitor attraction centre. With its success in our Building Better Communities competition, the station is now almost half way there.
13 other projects took home amounts between £1,000 and £10,000. Amid the list was Ilkeston’s Arena Community, a local charity which has been gifted the use of the town’s former Woolworth’s building for a social enterprise project to help marginalised people back into employment. This well-deserving charity was awarded £10,000, which will go towards building renovations.
Other winners included Sunderland-based 4Louis, a family-run charity which supports families grieving the trauma of a stillbirth or neonatal death, and the Galloway Cricket Club, which provides structured sports activities for children in the local area.
David Fenton, Marketing Director at Jewson, said: “A huge congratulations goes out to all the Building Better Communities competition finalists. From over 2,000 entries we selected just 14 projects, so it’s a fantastic achievement for the winners and we can’t wait to see the positive effect the prize money will have.
“We’d also like to thank every single project that was involved in the Building Better Communities competition, from the start to the end. The work all of these initiatives do is essential to the lives of so many people across the country so it was really difficult to pick just 14 winners.”
To view the full list of winners and find out more about the work these projects do in their communities, visit: https://www.buildingbettercommunities.co.uk/
