Our 2021 highlights
Thanks to all our wonderful volunteers and supporters who’ve helped make this year the best yet
As we start to think about closing down the Move the Masses (virtual) HQ for another year, we’ve been feeling rather contemplative about our achievements over the past 12 months. In spite of the challenges we’ve all faced this year, we’ve continued to grow and, we think, support an impressive number of people in our community to get moving. We wanted to share some of our this year’s highlights with you all:
We’ve launched our new website and Move Map
Our fantastic student interns, Megan and Livvy, have developed our Wellbeing Walks project. They have recently launched a new group walk in Tang Hall, as well as growing our three, established group walks in Acomb, Fishergate and Scarcoft. Thanks to all our Walk Leaders who’ve also helped to make this possible.
Behind the scenes, we’ve had a troop of amazing volunteer developers working on our digital development project, building us a shiny new system to help us manage our operations more smoothly.
2021 also saw the birth of our fundraising team, who have already organised a number of fantastic events, not least our recent inaugural 12ks of Christmas challenge , which raised over £1000!
Our crew of volunteer Move Mailers have saved us over £550 in postage by delivering Move the Masses mail to our beneficiaries all over York…and even got fitter in the process!
Our Move Mates project has continued to grow: our wonderful walking buddy volunteers have completed over 2230 walks; 139 doorstep chats and 303 phone calls/texts to support our beneficiaries…we think that’s pretty awesome if we say so ourselves!
In addition to all this, we’ve run some fabulous training sessions to help our volunteers to better support our beneficiaries; welcomed new members of staff to our (small) team and said goodbye to some old colleagues; had a support crew of awesome volunteer administrators who’ve kept us going behind the scenes and, importantly, kept smiling and moving through year two of the pandemic!
Of course, none of this would be possible without our AMAZING volunteers and we want to say a huge, heartfelt, thank you to you all (there are too many to name here!). At our recent (virtual!) volunteer Award ceremony, a number of our volunteers won the accolade for things like ‘Best Author’ (for the penmanship on post-walk logs); ‘Most Move Mate walks’ (the top three had all completed over 60 walks this year, with the #1 spot going to the fantastic Danny Davis, with 99 walks!); and the ‘Move Mate hero’ award, which went to beneficiary Charlene Murray, for massively surpassing her own expectations. A full list of all the Award winners can be seen below. A full list of all award winners can be seen below.
The evening was a fantastic celebration of our collective achievements this year – as volunteers, staff, supporters and fundraisers. We think the quote from one of our Trustees, John, below, sums it all up pretty perfectly.
Thank you all and we’re excited to see what 2022 has in store!
“Such a lot of achievements by so many people for so many people”
John Bourton, Board of Trustees
Well done to all our 2021 Award Winners:
The Move Mailer of the Year – Mitch Scott
Tech Volunteer of the Year – Karolis Kimtys
Volunteer Administrator of the Year – Laura Barrett
The Learner Award – Pete Massey
Most Adventurous Pair – Liz and David (Runners Up: Claire & Valerie and Margaret & Lizzie)
The Author Award – Helen Wright
The Photographer – John Bourton
Move Mate of the Year -Danny Davis (Runners Up: Kerry Merriam & Kate Bissell)
The Commitment Award – Kate Bissell and Penny Gregg
The Move Mate Hero Award – Charlene Murray (beneficiary)
Fundraising effort of the year – Ed, Michal and Michael
Social Media Hero of the Year – Helen Wright