Wave 102 Local Hero Awards 2007

Sandra Hutton was declared the winner of the Wave 102 Local Hero Award at a ceremony held in West Park Conference Centre in Dundee on Friday 24th March 2007.

Sandra won this prestigious award for her work in supporting a local charity Eighteen And Under and for her voluntary work in the community helping disadvantaged children.

Sandra works full time in a very demanding and challenging job. She is a Police Officer working on the streets, in an area of high poverty and deprivation. Despite this extremely demanding job, Sandra has devoted much of her spare time to raising funds for Eighteen And Under, a children’s charity which works with abused children.

When Sandra realised a few years ago that this charity did not have secure funding, she set to work. Before she goes on her late shift at 3pm, she goes into Eighteen And Under to do her fundraising. She does this from 9am till 2pm almost every day then goes on to her paid job which she does till 11pm. When on early shift in her paid job, she starts at 7am and finishes her shift at 3pm. Then she goes to Eighteen And Under to raise more funds.

Last year she raised over £42,000 for the charity. Over the last few years she has raised over £100,000. As a result of Sandra’s efforts, this charity has been able to extend the work it does with abused children.

As if this isn’t enough though, Sandra realised that children in the Kirkton area of Dundee were greatly in need of diversionary activities to keep them out of trouble, raise their self-confidence and teach them new skills. She decided to do something about it. She persuaded a local charity Kirkton Community Support to provide a venue free of charge, found a drum teacher to teach for free, involved Eighteen And Under in the work, raised funds for drums and equipment and set up a samba drumming group for the local children.

Sandra runs this group every Monday evening and the children have gone on to perform publicly. This group has now been running for over 2 years and many disadvantaged children have benefited from being involved in it.

Sandra Hutton in a very worthy winner of the Local Hero Award and an inspiration to others. Rather than moaning about things not being right, she sees the need for something to change or happen and does something about it.