TEN years of employee volunteering were recognised at the York Cares Golden Moments of the Decade’ Awards.

The awards are organised by York Cares, the employee-volunteering charity committed to making York a better place through volunteering, which is celebrating its tenth anniversary.

The event brought together employee-volunteers, their employers and the community organisations they have supported to congratulate them on the contribution they have made to the city over the past 12 months and the past decade.

BBC Radio York presenter Elly Fiorentini presented the 2016 awards to volunteers from nine York businesses, with a further six organisations receiving special awards for their outstanding contribution over the last ten years.

The Golden Moments of the Decade awards went to North Yorkshire Police, Benenden, Tesco, University of York, Portakabin and The Partners Group.

Monica Green, director of York PR and marketing agency The Partners Group, said: “York Cares has the support of more than 40 businesses and 13,000 employee volunteers have given their time to over 1,000 community partners and delivered over 127,000 hours of volunteering over the past ten years.

“This has had a huge impact on the city and the awards are a fantastic way to recognise this contribution.”

More than 800 employees each year now undertake team challenges to help with digging, painting and gardening in community venues. One was by a team from Aviva, who won an award for their work fundraising and transforming the gardens at Hamilton House Children’s Home.

Lindsay Brown from Aviva said: “The rewards from volunteering are absolutely amazing. Firstly, to see the children and the community that you helped really enjoy it, and then as a team yourself you have a good time together and that can only really help the company that you work for.”

Windsor House older people’s home is a regular partner with York Cares. Julie Borthwick, manager, said: “Volunteering is absolutely paramount to an organisation like ours. Our staff work as hard as they can, but to have an extra pair of hands come in is just wonderful and it’s so important to improving the residents’ lives”.

York Cares was launched by the University of York, City of York Council, Aviva and Garbutt and Elliott. It now has 43 employer members and represents over a quarter of York’s workforce from public and private sectors. It has five key volunteering programmes which each aim to bring together the resources and expertise of employees with charities and communities.

To see how to get involved visit yorkcares.co.uk or call 01904 323482.