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The Drummond Centre Project in Donemana claimed the Community Resilience, award while the Liberty Consortium at the Playtrail and the Glen Development Initiative in Derry were runners up in the Community Wellbeing and Community Youth categories respectively.

The Pride of Place awards is an annual competition organised by peacebuilding charity Co-operation Ireland and aims to promote and celebrate the best in community development across the island of Ireland.

Mayor Warke was one of the special guests from all four provinces in attendance.

Mayor of Derry City and Strabane District Council, Alderman Graham Warke pictured with delegates from the Drummond Centre, the Liberty Consortium at The Playtrail and the Glen Development initiative at the Pride of Place Awards in the INEC in Killarney.

“The IPB Pride of Place Awards celebrate the selfless efforts of people to make their local neighbourhoods better places to live, work and socialise,” he said.

“All three local projects certainly meet that criteria and I was bursting with pride to be with them as they learned of their success.

“I would like to thank all three award winners whose dedicated work to make a difference in society has been recognised at this event.

“We are coming out of a period where so many people have demonstrated their community spirit by making sacrifices to keep others safe and ease the burden on our health service and I want to place on record my gratitude to everyone for that.”

Liberty Consortium are a community organisation based in the Outer North Area of Derry, located on the Playtrail site (on the grounds of Ardnashee Special School) and at the HUB in Northside Village Shopping Centre. Established in 2002 the organization has grown from strength to strength, embedding itself within the local community. Its services include management of the Playtrail community facility.

Pride of Place Chairman Tom Dowling added: “These Awards continue to be as important as ever as we are about to start judging the 20th year of the competition.

“The purpose of the awards has never changed, they are about recognising and celebrating the extraordinary, inspirational, and tireless work being done by communities all over the island of Ireland as they strive to make their place a better place to live.”

The IPB Pride of Place Competition is open to all community groups by way of local authority nomination only.

As the IPB Pride of Place Awards is an all-island competition, it is very competitive, however, DCSDC have been successful three years in a row, with the Victoria Bridge Community Association winning their category in 2018, the Pink Ladies Cancer Support Group winning their category in 2019 and Learmount Community Association received second place in their category in 2020.

For further details visit www.prideofplace.ie.

Derry & Strabane Mayor hails Pride of Place Awards success