Heywood Children's Charity - Little Monkeys receives the Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service

Volunteer trustees of Heywood Children's Charity - Little Monkeys, Alice and Douglas Foulger

Heywood Children's Charity - Little Monkeys has been honoured with the Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service, the highest award a voluntary group can receive in the UK.

The charity works alongside social, health and welfare professionals in Heywood to help alleviate the needs of local disadvantaged children, helping them to grow into happy and productive citizens.

It has been shown that poverty, malnutrition and illness can have an adverse effect on the education and development of children, with the resultant cost to the community, which the charity works to combat.

Volunteer trustees, Alice and Douglas Foulger represented the charity at a garden party at Buckingham Palace in May, along with other recipients of this year’s award. The award will be presented to the group by the Lord Lieutenant of Lancashire later this summer.

Dr Michael Taylor, chair of the trustees, expressed on behalf of colleagues how delighted they were the charity had been honoured with the Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service and paid tribute to the hard work, commitment and dedication of their volunteers, without whom it would not be possible to carry out the work they do in the community.

Heywood Children's Charity - Little Monkeys is one of 281 charities, social enterprises and voluntary groups to receive the award this year. The number of nominations and awards has increased year on year since the awards were introduced in 2002, showing that the voluntary sector is thriving and full of innovative ideas making life better for those around them.

The recipients of the Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service, created in 2002 to celebrate the Queen’s Golden Jubilee, are announced every year on 2 June – the anniversary of the Queen’s Coronation.

Any volunteer-led group comprising two or more people that are making a positive impact on the lives of other people in an exceptional way can be nominated for an award.