CAPTION: The team from the Westport Club were humbled with their award win on the weekend.
PORT Macquarie’s Westport Club has been named the community ambassador of the year at the Clubs NSW annual awards in Sydney.
More than 1000 representatives from the NSW Club industry gathered at the gala awards night to celebrate their commitment to local communities.
In a shift from the format of previous years, Clubs NSW centred the awards on recognition of clubs as the heart of their local communities.
Clubs from across NSW were honoured for their commitment to their communities and the event celebrated many of the unique and touching stories that have come from club community initiatives.
Of the 1400 entries received, The Westport Club was selected as the 2013 Clubs and Community Ambassador of the Year in the Far North and Mid North Coast region.
The Westport Club was recognised for its ongoing commitment to improving literacy in the region.
In February, the club committed more than $70,000 to the purchase, fit-out and stocking of a mobile library service known as the Library Literacy Van.
The project was developed in collabouration with Port Macquarie-Hastings Council and was designed to improve the quality of literacy resources in the region.
Westport Club community coordinator Jenny Edmunds said the club was “honoured and humbled to have received the award”.
“The Library Literacy Van was a concept that came out of a dedication to helping children fall in love with reading,” she said.
“We are lucky to have collabourated with a very passionate and dedicated library team at council.
“Together we have witnessed the faces of so many children light up, as they enter their mobile library for the first time and have access to books and resources that many of the more isolated schools lack.”
The Library Literacy Van has made an average of four school visits per week to date and more than 700 children in the region have loaned about 1000 books.
