What are the Awards about?

Community Champions

Community Champions 2009, The Respect Team from Ilford

The Damilola Taylor Trust developed the awards in consultation with other youth organisations and affiliate partners as a way of celebrating all that is good about the young people of London.

The Trust felt there should be an awards show that celebrated these positive role models. The long term objective is that the awards will become a standard that all young people will aspire to be involved with and gain recognition through.

The inaugural event at the Alexander Palace in Haringey was a huge success and established the credentials of the awards as "The Community Oscars for Young People" and now the 2010 event at the Indigo O2 in Greenwich has a lot to live up to. A challenge that SOLA event management team is relishing.

The awards were launched in 2009 by the Damilola Taylor Trust with 3,500 nominations being received from across the 33 Boroughs of London.

The project was created by the Trust as a way of addressing the imbalance in the way young people are portrayed by the national media in general.

It is a fact that of all the crime committed by young people in London 100% of all violent crimes are attributable to only 1% of the youth population. www.99percent.org.uk

The Damilola Taylor Trust also believes the project can act as a beacon of positivity for bringing the 33 Boroughs together under a single umbrella to celebrate young people. The Boroughs all do great work in tackling youth issues and the project adds cohesion to their individual efforts to show young people in a positive light.

The inaugural awards show event was staged at the Alexandra Palace in Wood Green on Friday 27th November 2009. – see SOLA 2009 for more information.

The event was billed as “The Community Oscars for young people” and the guest line up to support the young people nominated included: Mayor Boris Johnston, Christine Ohorogu, Jason Leonard, JLS, Tasha Danvers, Sir Michael Caine and the show was co-hosted by Brooke Kinsella and Lemar.

There were also performances from: Diversity, Lemar, Speech Debelle, Miss Frank, DJ Ironic and X Factor winner – Alexandra Burke.

The main stars of the event though were the young nominees and eventual award winners details of all 23 can be found here.

Click on MORE INFORMATION under each award winner and there is video - references for all those nominated – THE CLASS OF 2009.

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