Volunteer Brian Hollands wins Lifetime Achievement Award

Dedicated St Christopher’s volunteer, Brian Hollands, has been selected as the winner of the Mayor of Croydon’s Lifetime Achievement Award in the 2017 Mayor of Croydon Civic Awards.

Brian, 88, first came to volunteer at St Christopher’s over 25 years ago shortly after his retirement from a career as a chartered surveyor. Volunteering as an ambulance driver, collecting patients from their homes and bringing them to the hospice for appointments, Brian soon became a firm favourite among both patients and staff.

Over the years Brian, who has lived in Croydon all his life, has been involved as a volunteer in many areas of the hospice such as archiving, selling raffle tickets in the Whitgift Centre and attending many of our fundraising events. Brian remains a dedicated volunteer who still comes in to the hospice every Friday to help out with tasks in the Fundraising Team such as cleaning collection tins and mailings – he is always cheerful and keen to help out in any way he can. Brian tells the fundraising team that his day volunteering at St Christopher’s is his favourite day of the week!

Community and Event Fundraising Manager, Georgie Grant, said: “We are delighted that Brian has won this award, it’s so very well deserved and we are all very grateful for his hard work and dedication to the hospice. He is like the grandpa I never had; in fact I regularly say that he is the greatest man in the world. He’s always cheerful and regularly asks for more work to ‘keep him out of mischief’. I also greatly admire his extensive collection of patterned jumpers.”

Brian also loves to use his shifts to talk to the Fundraising Team about his wife Marjorie, a fellow Croydon local, whom he met at their local church where she was a member of the choir and he was a server.