Celebrating the volunteers keeping our canals alive

In partnership with The Marsh Charitable Trust, the awards recognise their hard work, dedication and boundless energy to help us keep our canals and towpaths safe and accessible all year round. We caught up with some of the nominees, to see what makes them all winners.

The Marsh Charitable Trust hands out around 100 awards each year to individuals and groups across the charity sector, rewarding those who make a difference to a cause they believe in. We teamed up with them several years ago, to honour the invaluable work of our volunteers. Since then, we’ve held annual awards ceremonies up and down the country, presenting two awards per region, one individual and one team award. With just a handful of trophies up for grabs, picking a winner is no easy task.

As Richard Owen, our volunteering development coordinator for the East Midlands, tells us: “It’s incredibly difficult to select nominees and choose a winner because they all play such a vital role in supporting our charity and enabling us to keep the waterways running. All our volunteers are amazing, they’ve done incredible things and go above and beyond, so in truth, they’re all worthy winners.”

In the East Midlands, the individual honours went to Rob Hetherington, who joined our charity in 2017. Known affectionately as “Mr Leicester”, thanks to his encyclopaedic knowledge of the city, Rob volunteers as a lock keeper on the River Soar.

“Rob’s incredibly passionate,” says Richard, “he’s always willing to go above and beyond, and he doesn’t sing and shout about what he does, he just gets on with it. He does it because he believes in the waterways, in the heritage of our canals and the important role they play in the community.”

Rob, who’s clocked up an impressive 2,000 volunteering hours since joining the Trust, also spends a lot of his free time litter picking, and he can often be found on his local towpath with his trusty net, fishing rubbish out of the canal.

Jim Mckeown, who scooped up the individual award in the North-West, has a similar affinity with our waterways, having spent most of his working life at the National Waterways Museum at Ellesmere Port in Cheshire. Following retirement, several years ago, we persuaded him to return as a volunteer. He now helps in our collections team, using his redoubtable knowledge to unlock the hidden stories behind some of the museum’s rarest artefacts.

As one of the founding members of the museum, Jim knows better than most how important volunteers are for our canals and rivers: “We couldn’t do a lot of what we do without volunteers,” he says, “they’re skilled and they’re willing and they get on with it. We all have different knowledge and experience, and whatever your background, you’ll definitely find something to fire your interest.”

Alongside the individual award, we also award a team trophy every year to recognise those volunteer groups that go above and beyond the call of duty. In the East Midlands, the prize went to the Erewash Towpath Taskforce, who (literally) went the extra mile, cutting back overgrown vegetation along a 6.5-mile stretch of the Erewash Canal from Trent Lock to Gallows Inn.

“The team was so enthusiastic,” says Richard, “it’s quite a messy job, but they were happy to get their hands dirty and go out in all weathers. They’ve done an incredible job clearing the offside vegetation, making the sightline clear for people using the waterways, and it’s had such a positive impact on the local environment.”

Mick Harrison, who volunteers with the task force, tells us there’s a wonderful team spirit within the group: “We all get on really well,” he says. “You can work as much or as little as you like, and it’s a great way to get some fresh air and exercise and enjoy some good company – it’s like a little club.”

Our volunteers are the beating heart of our network, and without them, our charity simply couldn’t function. They support our operations team, provide a friendly face for the general public, and help us deliver a multitude of initiatives, from education and wellbeing to heritage and conservation. They’re all winners in our eyes, and if we could, we’d present an award to each and every one of them.