Citizen Of The Year

2022 – Kurt Charge & Brian Rogers

Twyford Parish Council are pleased to announce the 2022 Twyford Citizens of the Year as Kurt Charge & Brian Rogers.

Kurt & Brian were presented with a plaque and a gift at the Twyford Together Community Awards event on 13th March 2023, by Twyford Parish Council Chairman Rohana Abeywardana.

The Councillors agreed that in recognition of being outstanding Twyford citizens Kurt & Brian should indeed join previous recipients of the Twyford Parish Council Citizen of the Year award and wish to offer a huge thank you to all residents who made nominations for this category.

Kurt & Brian are both dedicated volunteers of Twyford Comets and below highlights the why they are worthy winners of this award:

Brian Rogers

Brian started coaching approximately 22 years ago, with the club’s Saturday Soccer School. He also formed a team which played on a Sunday in the South Chiltern Minor League and set up one of the very first girls teams for Twyford Comets. That girls team carried on for 11 years, going all the way to under 18-s and playing in the newly formed Berkshire Girls League, of which the Comets were founding members.

Simultaneously, he ran another team that eventually went up to under 21-s when Steve Green and Brian decided to form what is believed to be the first ever Twyford Comets men’s team, who continue to play together to this day in the Reading Sunday League.

For the last 8 years, every Saturday morning he has helped to run the Mini Comets and, each year, he helps to set up the new under 7-s team from the rising Mini Comets, thus ensuring the Club’s future is secured.

In the last 5 years, he has held the post of Head Coach for the Club and has helped to set up an exchange trip with Cuincy each season for the under 12-s and 13-s.

Kurt Charge

Kurt has been involved with Twyford Comets for over 5 years. He runs one of the U14-s teams and is also the Club’s Events Secretary with the responsibility for ensuring the various Club events run smoothly. In particular, he organises the Comets/Reading FC Soccer School, the Comets Presentation Evenings, the Comets Annual Funday, the Comets stall at the Twyford Fun Run and also The Gordon Storey Football Tournament that started last year.

Recently he has been involved with helping organise the Comets exchange trips for both the Dutch and Cuincy teams.

Congratulations Kurt & Brian!

2021 – Gerry Wise

Twyford Parish Council are pleased to announce the 2021 Twyford Citizen of the Year as Gerry Wise.

Gerry, an active and long-standing resident of Twyford took over the organisation of Twyford’s Adopt-A-Street along with the help of his wife Christine when Sue Goddard left the area in early 2016. Since then, the Adopt-A-Street team under Gerry and Chris’ leadership have been fundamental in keeping Twyford as litter free as possible.

A few of Gerry’s tasks sees him liaising with Wokingham Borough Council to obtain items such as Hi-Vis jackets, Litter Pickers, and rubbish bags which he distributes to the volunteers. Gerry also set up a specific e-mail address to assist with communication throughout the group.

In addition, and as well as being a keen allotmenteer, Gerry is an active member of the Twyford in Bloom team and helps to ensure that the village is looking its best come the day of the judging.

Congratulations Gerry an excellent example to all!

2020 – Sam Bramwell

Twyford Parish Council are pleased to announce the 2020 Twyford Citizen of the Year as Sam Bramwell.

In recognition of all the hard work and effort on the Covid-19 support group within Twyford.

Sam spearheaded and organised the group and was the driving force to taking it forward to provide support during the pandemic to Twyford residents.

It takes somebody special to get this sort of thing started, to galvanise it and to get it going.

Congratulations Sam!

2019 – Peter Tate

Twyford Parish Council are pleased to announce the 2019 Twyford Citizen of the Year as Peter Tate.

Peter moved to Twyford with his family and late wife Maureen in 1972.

This was around the time in 1971 when the 1st Twyford Boys Brigade (BB) was founded by Ron Warner and others at the United Reformed Church. Having grown up in the BB in Bournemouth and become an officer Peter was quick to offer his help. Since that time Peter has served as an officer and then Captain of the BB in Twyford for nearly 45 years, until it’s closure in 2016. Although Peter still meets with a few of the Ex-boys on Monday nights for some fun and yes, he still plays football at 80 plus.

Over nearly 50 years Peter has, and continues to have, a positive impact on the lives of young people in Twyford, through his work with the BB and churches in Twyford. Over those years he has organised and enthused many hundreds of young people to explore their faith and be better people.

At 80 plus he is still actively involved in leading Chattabox, the St Mary’s Holiday Club held at the end of August. Using not only his DIY skills to help make all sorts of props and sets that help bring the club alive. But also getting to know and work aside many young people. Many children will have made one of the Easter crosses that he creates each year for the Chattabox Good Friday service.

He has helped young people to raise many tens of thousands of pounds not only for the BB but for other good causes, including PHAB, World Vision, Christian Aid and many more. With events such as 24hr famines, sports, darts and yes one year a 24-hour pram push. For many years the BB collected newspapers around Twyford for recycling and delivered the Twyford Parish News for the Parish Council. The BB was also actively involved in lots of other events in and around Twyford from Litter picks to making floats for the Bonfire carnival.

Many ex-BB members will remember the camps and activities that he helped organise and the memories that were created. He may have lost car keys, fallen out of trees, broken glasses, dressed up as strange characters, got lost and yes one time reversed into the only telegraph pole in an empty farmer’s field. But the one thing he has never lost is his sense of fun and passion to make a difference to the lives of young people. A fantastic example to us all how an individual can bring people together to make a difference in this community. Thank you, Peter, for all you do for Twyford.

2018 – Kathy Peck

Twyford Parish Council are pleased to announce the 2018 Twyford Citizen of the Year as Kathy Peck.

Kathy has devoted her time working tirelessly and enthusiastically on local community issues over the years.

In particular her dedication to support the Youth Centre which saw her fight to keep it open in 2014 when Wokingham Borough Council stopped funding it is hugely admirable. She gives up her time on Saturday mornings to run the pop-up cafe, bringing in much needed funds for the Youth Centre. This is in addition to raising money by running a cake stand at the Donkey Derby.

Kathy has also previously been Chairperson of the Toddler Group, a post held for 3 years, a Parish Councillor, Twyford Village Partnership secretary and PTA Member.

Comments such as ‘deserves this award like no other’ and ‘She is truly one of life’s positive people, always smiling and the first to put up her hand to help’ is echoed by those that know Kathy.

Congratulations Kathy, well deserved!

2016 – Tom Toy

Twyford Parish Council are pleased to announce the 2016 Twyford Citizen of the Year as Tom Toy.

Tom has been involved with 1st Twyford Scouts since 1988 first as a member of the Group Executive and from 1995 as the Group Chairman.

Tom’s career showed him carrying out a very demanding job of Air Traffic Controller. Despite this, he still found time to organise and run the very busy and active 1st Twyford Scout Troop. He has now retired from his job and devotes even more of his spare time to scouting.

Tom has always led from the front and sets an example for all others to follow in terms of his enthusiasm and hard work put in to make sure all the activities are interesting for the group members and very successful. Whenever the group are involved in an event whether it is a pure scouting activity or other event in the local community where we are participating Tom will be there to lend a hand.

Apart from “normal “scouting activities, Tom organises many other events that engender a marvellous team spirit in the group amongst both leaders and the group executive. It is due to his input that we have such a strong team of long serving leaders that are the envy of many other groups.

One of the first events instigated by Tom was the annual Parent & Son Camp. This has been an enormous success over the years and there are numerous parents in Twyford whose sons have grown up and left scouting that still talk about the wonderful time they had attending these camps. It has, of course moved with the times, and is currently attended by both girls and mums. Numbers vary from year to year but typically 90 to 100 parents, children and leaders attend for a weekend of interesting and stimulating activities.

Another activity started by Tom is the annual leader’s weekend away, which includes partners and members of the group executive. This gives everyone a chance to participate in a variety of interesting activities and to have some quality time together without the responsibility of children for a change. A wide variety of activities have been organised over the years ranging from high ropes courses to caving and scuba diving. A very enjoyable and worthwhile time is had by all and despite it not being intended for this a lot of planning is discussed for the activities to be run during the year.

The bonding that takes place over this weekend helps maintain the wonderful team spirit that exists in the group and helps with the running of events because everyone knows each other so well.

Tom is also very aware of the role scouting plays in the local community. An example of this is the annual carol concert that he organises in the parish church. This event is open to the local community and provides an opportunity for the group members to celebrate the spirit of Christmas in a pleasant way and provide some entertainment for members of the community who attend.  Each year the money raised at this event is not put in our funds but donated to a local charity.

Apart from having a good team spirit in the group it is important to make sure it has a sound financial base to be able to run successfully. Once again Tom plays an important role in this. Every year he takes on the organisation and running of the marquee hiring business run by the group. As well as organising all the bookings Tom recruits the helpers to erect and take down the marquees takes the marquees to site and organises the erections. Every year this raises several thousand pounds towards the group running costs.

Another part of the support organised by him is the group minibus, this plays an important role in transporting people to the numerous activities we are involved in.  Tom negotiated with a local school to allow us to park in on their site and he organises all the bookings, maintenance, insurance, breakdown cover and MOT to make sure it is always available for use.

A further example of Tom’s dedication and spirit has been shown recently in the Project Phoenix which was set up following the arson attack on the HQ to enabling it to be rebuilt and provide an HQ to serve the community for years to come – Tom’s scouting instincts came to the fore, and he set about organising a fund raising committee and a new building design group to start the arduous task of replacing the HQ and contents. He was determined that there would be no interruption to the scouting activities provided by 1^st Twyford for its members. Immediately he set about the task of investigating locations and speaking to local organisations to make sure the group had a location to meet and in a matter of weeks this was completed. This meant that from the date of the incident to when the group occupied their new premises there were no interruption to scouting activities.   From the onset Tom worked tirelessly to find sources and obtain funds to help finance the rebuild.  He has put together numerous applications for grants and has never been put off by the rejection of many. This has been a daunting task that would have put many people off, but Tom has persevered, and his efforts have made a significant contribution to the £220,000+ raised to rebuild. He then became actively involved in fund raising to enable the completion of the rest of the project involving the construction of a stores building and garage. He is still organising the collection and delivery of used printer cartridges to companies that pay the Scouting Group for them so they can use them for recycling.

Congratulations Tom!