Salute to your local heroes ...

WE asked Sunday Mirror readers to nominate your local unsung heroes to receive cash awards...and the names poured in

Now the awards are going to good causes like the Bluebirds Wheelchair Basketball Club, established just four years ago and thriving in the third division of the Great Britain Wheelchair Basketball League.

The club has now received a much-needed donation to buy more wheelchairs.

We teamed up with grocery store chain Spar and invited you to nominate your favourite local causes for a pounds 1,500 boost each. It was your chance to offer a helping hand to the unsung heroes who work at the heart of our community with little recognition.

Each will get a share of the pounds 150,000 raised by shopkeepers at Spar's 2,700 branches.

The disabled basketball players in Bromley, Kent, were nominated by mum- of-two Paulette Grayson, who helped start the club when her 40-year-old son Lee, who suffers from spina bifida, complained there were few facilities for the disabled in the area.

Paulette said: "I'm over the moon. Wheelchair basketball is a minority sport and it's hard to raise money.

"But if we weren't here a lot of our members would have nowhere to go. It's a serious, high-powered sport which helps keep them fit and lets them have a fun at the same time." Another recipient of your generosity was the Belfast Boys Brigade Battalion, which brings together more than 8000 Catholic and Protestant youngsters in the Greater Belfast area.

The youngsters, from nine to 25 years old, meet regularly for recreational and social activities.

One of the most successful projects has been a cross-community five- a-side football tournament, but until now they haven't had the money to buy their own goal posts. Thanks to a nomination from leader Maurice Williamson, they can now afford their own. He said: "A lot of our work aims to bring peace to the country. I hope that in years to come historians will look back and acknowledge the key role we played in ending the troubles."

Another donation goes to The Riding For The Disabled Association, which can now afford a new animal for its Glasgow centre. Director John Davis said: "These little donkeys pull disabled people in special carriages which can carry a wheelchair. The disabled get so much from it."

The Christian Lewis Trust in Swansea, Wales, is a charity set up in 1989 to care for children with cancer and their families. Among the work it does is sending sufferers and their families on caravan holidays near the beach.

Its pounds 1,500 donation will help equip a third mobile home so more families can take a well-deserved break.

Thanks to the generosity of our readers and Spar shoppers, these and many more local causes face a much brighter future.

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