Brora Community Council to present 'extra mile' award to village's coronavirus pandemic volunteers
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A GROUP of volunteers who went the "extra mile" to look after vulnerable people in an East Sutherland village during the coronavirus pandemic, are to be recognised.
Brora Community Council has decided to present its Community Award 2023 to the village’s COVID-19 volunteers, who number around 50 people in total.
The handsome award is set to be presented to the group at a ceremony to be held during Brora Carnival Week which runs from Sunday to Saturday July 23-29.
It is expected that the presentation will take place around mid-day in the marquee which has been erected in the playing field next to Brora Primary School. An exact date has yet to be confirmed.
Brora Community Council has presented the award annually for more than two decades to individuals or groups who are considered to have gone above and beyond, and given sterling service to the village.
Past recipients have included Brora Amenities Group (2013); the late George MacBeath (2017); and retired Brora and Helmsdale schools’ cluster head teacher Dawn MacKenzie (2018).
Brora Community Council secretary Sandy Crawford told the Northern Times that when the Covid crisis hit, he had gone to the community council and the local resilience group to ask what measures were being put in place to support vulnerable people through the crisis.
However, he said, he had been told that a pandemic did not feature in the groups’ operating remit.
“It was either 10 feet of snow or an electricity outage”, he said.
Supported by fellow community council chairman Russell Rekhy, Mr Crawford then put out the message to the community that volunteers were needed.
“In the space of a week we had 50 volunteers,” he recalled. “I was the first point of contact because I was retired and items such as gloves and hand sanitiser were all kept in my garage.”
Mr Crawford added that one of the volunteers Annarie Heneghan had set up an online means of communication for the group that “worked like clockwork”.
“We surveyed the whole village and volunteers did their own area” he said.
“We followed the Scottish Government’s risk assessment and adhered to the recommendation that no-one crossed the threshold of someone’s house.
“The volunteers just checked on vulnerable residents to make sure they were okay and helped them out if they needed anything doing such as getting shopping in or such like.”
