Transcript for 'Community awards 2006' film

Good morning everyone. Big, Big welcome to BAFTA!

Today’s primarily about sharing some of the fantastic projects our people in O2 are involved in, outside of the business, in the community.

The most important people here are our finalists but I’m also thrilled to make the day even more fun by introducing some special guests.

Good afternoon everyone. My name is Catherine Millan, and I’m a 19 year old student and I would like to tell you something about my personal journey and my work as a peer mentor with Weston Spirit and O2.

Getting involved in working with young children is the best thing you can do in your life and one of the most rewarding. So I think everyone should just experience it.

I learned how powerful mentoring can be by changing young peoples lives. I learned to encourage others, and to make others listen. I hope I can make you listen and make you hear why young people need you to believe in us. Thank you all here today for listening.

The stuff Catherine said about making a difference to young people is just so important.

I think the fact that O2 are out there, they recognise that contribution of employers is important and I don’t even think it should be every major company that does it, you know, it should be every company that values it’s workforce that should be encouraging people to have a sense of social responsibility and give something back.

It’s about having a goal and a dream, it’s about seeing what you might achieve, and if you excuse the pun, if you actually put yourself on the starter line, you don’t know, but if you don’t put yourself on the starter line you’ll never have a chance of winning that gold medal.

When you hear people speaking, hear Tommy (Harrison) speaking, about what he’s done in the past year as a previous winner, it’s just so emotional. And it’s the fact people are doing it on top of their work, their family and everything else their doing. It just gives everybody hope that you can make a difference but it’s about going out and doing it.

This was a defining moment in my life; the child was born blind and had been abandoned by his family and left at a baby hospital. He’s basically faced a life in an orphanage. Having spent a short time there myself, this was just not acceptable to me.

With £10,000 from last years award, we bought some land and built a house but the real bonus for me is seeing £7500 pounds spent and guaranteeing that 120 children will go home and not into an orphanage.

Now we get to the highlight and that’s the O2 Community awards 2006. Each operating business ran a contest to select one finalist per award category. We have a winner from each of the 3 categories, but frankly each finalist here today is a winner.

Let’s start with the first category,