A MAJOR York company has once more thrown its weight behind our campaign to honour York’s unsung heroes.

As always, our York Community Pride campaign has unearthed some of the city’s true champions – people who go the extra mile to help others or improve the area they live in.

This year is the sixth in which we have teamed up with the City of York Council to help celebrate those special individuals and groups whose sterling work makes a positive, but often unsung, contribution to the city.

And as in previous years Aviva, which employs about 3,000 people in York, has agreed to be the main sponsor.

This is the sixth year the insurance giant has backed the campaign.

Kevan Baker, UK community affairs manager, said Aviva — formerly Norwich Union – was delighted once again to be the overall sponsor of the event, which includes supporting the Person of the Year and Volunteer of the Year categories.

“Aviva is proud to support the York Community Pride Awards,,” Mr Baker said. “We continue to be active across a wide range of community activities in York, where possible involving our employees.”

“We look forward to the awards evening in October to see and hear more enlightening stories from the unsung heroes in the city and we would like to wish the nominees good luck.”

A number of other firms have already stepped forward to back the awards. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation is sponsoring the award for Best Community Project, Drax Power Limited is supporting the Teacher Of The Year category, Nestlé is once again sponsoring the Spirit Of Youth award and McDonald’s Restaurants have renewed their sponsorship of the Child of the Year award. York Racecourse and printing experts Wood Richardson Ltd are also supporting categories.

* Due to an administrative error, two names were omitted from our awards shortlist when it was first announced in July. Anne Stamp should have featured among the four finalists for our Person of the Year and Andrew Williams should have been included in the Public Sector Hero shortlist. We apologise for the confusion.