Women’s Community Matters Barrow receives the Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service

Women’s Community Matters, based in Barrow in Furness have been honoured with the Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service, the highest award a voluntary group can receive in the UK.

Women’s Community Matters provides a ‘one-stop shop’ women’s centre for women and their families and in recent years have added projects working with young women and men to their work. They work with adults and young people from Barrow, Furness and the wider area. The centre works with women and young people who are looking for support with a range of issues including personal development courses, access to training and education domestic abuse and general health and wellbeing support and advice.

Women’s Community Matters is one of 230 charities, social enterprises and voluntary groups to receive the prestigious award this year. The number of nominations remains high year on year, showing that the voluntary sector is thriving and full of innovative ideas to make life better for those around them.

The Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service aims to recognise outstanding work by volunteer groups to benefit their local communities. It was created in 2002 to celebrate the Queen’s Golden Jubilee. Recipients are announced each year on 2nd June, the anniversary of the Queen’s Coronation. Award winners this year are wonderfully diverse. They include volunteer groups from across the UK, including a community shop in Cornwall, an environmental group in Swansea, a group working with refugees and vulnerable people in Stirling and a thriving community arts centre in County Down.

Representatives of Women’s Community Matters will receive the award from Clare Hensman, Lord Lieutenant of Cumbria later this summer. Furthermore, two volunteers from Women’s Community Matters will attend a garden party at Buckingham Palace in May 2021, along with other recipients of this year’s Award.

Women’s Community Matters Senior Officer, Rebecca Robson says: “We are really pleased that the work we do here at Women’s Community Matters in Barrow has been recognised, and I would like to pay tribute to the hard work and commitment of all of our volunteers, trustees, staff, friends, funders and supporters in the community without whom it wouldn’t be possible.”

Rebecca continued, “We are particularly lucky to have great support from a large number of dedicated and committed volunteers, they give way more than their time, they give the love care, compassion and kindness that our organisation is built upon, from our volunteer trustees to those volunteers who keep the centre running on a daily basis – we love them all and this award is for them.”

“We’d also like to mention the women and young people who come to our centre, we learn and gain so much from them and they help us get better at what we do so we can better help others – we are ever grateful for the love and kindness they show in giving something back to us and the next group of people who come to use the centre.”

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