About - The Beacon Fellowship – Young philanthropist 2008

Vikki was nominated for this award by several Post Pal parents. Dylan from the Community Channel visited Vikki to make a short video to be shown at the awards and on the channel. Vikki saw one of the pages of nominations and got all misty eyed! Earlier in the day of the awards event, Vikki and her Mum joined Fellows for lunch at Coutts bank, they had never felt so humble than when listening to others talking about their life’s work changing the world around them. In the evening a formal award ceremony was held, where the video Dylan had made was shown and the award presented by Martyn Lewis. The video was fantastic and we still use it to this day!

The Beacon Award is a huge honour, Gordon Brown described it as;

“The voluntary sector equivalent of a Nobel Prize.” Gordon Brown

Martyn Lewis CBE, who is most famous for presenting BBC news, is chairman of the Beacon Awards as well as the Queen’s Award said;

“I think Vikki is one of the most amazing people it has been my privilege to meet. Post Pals as a concept is completely outstanding. It’s one of those wonderful ideas that you wonder why no-one had thought of it before, maybe because everyone thought it existed. But Vikki thought about it and did something; she had the initiative and energy to get it all together and is now helping a growing number of young people in similar positions to her. I think it’s a really terrific organisation and deserves to be supported.” Martyn Lewis

The video made for the Beacon Awards was shown on the Community Channel several times and in 2011 for their 10th birthday the channel chose the 5 most inspiring stories from the last 10 years. What an amazing surprise to be told that Post Pals was one of those 5. You can watch the feature here (we are the first story) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDpmd8rnNVY&feature=youtube_gdata_player