The prestigious Sustainable Swansea Awards 2008 huge success!

The Sustainable Swansea Awards showcases what many local organisations and individuals are doing to make a difference. This year, twenty-one projects were short-listed in seven different categories and the winners were announced at a prestigious ceremony in the Brangwyn Hall on 22nd July. The event was presided over by the Evening Post’s editor, Spencer Feeney, and there was a special address by BBC presenter Jason Mohammad who explained his understanding of sustainability with reference to his experiences when reporting at the World Summit in Johannesburg in 2002.

The seven award categories were large and small businesses, large and small community projects, schools, public agencies and individual champions. A judging panel of fourteen experts in the fields of environment, education, development and community regeneration deliberated over 45 applications and chose three finalists for each category to attend the awards ceremony.

“The standard for this year’s awards was incredibly high and the task faced by the judges was not an easy one to say the least. There was much excitement amongst the applicants and others involved in the scheme but the final winners were kept secret until the awards evening when they were revealed ‘Oscar-style’ by each category sponsor.” explained one of the coordinators, Philip McDonnell.

As well as a winner being announced for each category, one project also received the Environment Agency Overall Winner Award. This was given to Down to Earth, which also came first in the Co-operative Membership Community Project Award (large projects). The project is a social enterprise based in Owensfield, Gower and provides groundbreaking sustainability education programmes for young people and training courses for adults in traditional building techniques, bushcraft and woodland management. The judges were particularly impressed with the organisation’s tremendous commitment to sustainability principles and the high standard of achievement in a relatively short time.