Boxing charity given Royal seal of approval
Queen’s awards recognise unsung volunteers, from buskers to boxers and Christmas tree recyclers
SUGAR RAY ROBINSON, the legendary welterweight world champion, once said he would have ended up as “a hoodlum or a gangster” without boxing. And for thousands of British teenagers the sport has been the same saving grace, producing dramatic results for their life chances, thanks to a charity that has been honoured by the Queen today.
Box Cleva, set up by firefighter Bob Williams, is one of 193 organisations which Buckingham Palace announces today as recipients of the Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service (QAVS).
Mr Williams, 50, started the charity in 2010 when a truancy officer turned up at his fire station asking if he knew anyone who could give boxing training to 12 unruly youths who had refused to attend school and showed no interest in sport, apart from the boxing ring.
“I have been involved in boxing for nearly 40 years, so I said I would do it,” said Mr Williams, a watch commander for Hertfordshire Fire & Rescue based at Borehamwood. “I taught them boxing skills, fitness, healthy eating, substance awareness, and they all went back to school.”
Since then, 6,000 children have been through the doors of the 11 clubs where the charity puts on its non-con-
tact sessions, giving them confidence, discipline and self-esteem. Anti-social behaviour has fallen by almost 40 per cent in some of the areas where Box Cleva operates.
Mr Williams said: “Mothers and fathers come up to me and other trainers to say we have saved their son or daughter. There’s no feeling quite like it.”
The QAVS, which started in 2002, honours Britain’s dedicated army of volunteers who benefit society with little other recognition. People such as Brian Denbigh, who at the age of 72 has come up with an answer to what lifelong musicians can do when they are getting too old to play in a band.
He now plays the guitar in public every weekend as part of the Loose Change Buskers, a 32-strong society based in Manchester, which has raised £257,000 for Cancer Research.
Other winners include the East Cheshire Hospice Christmas Tree Collection, which has raised more than £700,000 in 16 years by collecting people’s trees to be recycled as green waste, in return for a donation to a hospice in Macclesfield. Its 350 volunteers have recycled 55,000 Christmas trees so far.
It was one of the defining moments of last month’s Invictus Games in Orlando, Florida, as US Army medic Elizabeth Marks, 25, having just won the 100m freestyle swimming gold, pressed the medal back into Prince Harry’s hands and asked him to pass it on to Papworth Hospital, in thanks for saving her life two years ago. Yesterday, the Prince presented it to the Cambridge heart and lung hospital’s senior medical team at Kensington Palace.