Lochwinnoch 'Commended
in
"Community Enhancement Through the Internet 2004"
Lochwinnoch Community Council has been Commended in the Calor Scottish Community of the Year Awards 2004 for its internet activity.This is the 4th year running that the website has won a Community of the Year award.
The
special ceremony held on Friday, November 26, 2004 at the
Edinburgh International Conference Centre was attended by His Royal
Highness, The Prince Charles, Duke of Rothesay. Representatvies
from the website attended the ceremony. 
Barbara Brown, The Web Pixie, was introduced to Prince Charles at a private reception before the event.
The Calor Scottish Community of the Year Awards provide communities with an opportunity to gain recognition and reward for their achievements.
"The common link all Community of the Year entrants share is a strong sense of community, which plays a vital role in enhancing the social, economic, commercial and environmental prosperity of their region. This year's finalists have shown outstanding community spirit together with an enormous sense of pride in their own achievements."
Scottish Community of the Year 2004
"Community Enhancement Through the Internet"
The Lochwinnoch website has been shortlisted for this year's Calor Gas Community of the Year Award. The internet is changing the way we live and the way we do business. From a community point of view, it offers opportunities to prevent isolation, enhance communication, promote tourism and business development and highlight all aspects of community life.
Through this award (Community Enhancement through the Internet), which is being judged by The Robert Gordon University, Calor Scotland and the ASCC want to highlight Scottish communities that are using the internet for the benefit of their community.
Competition was particularly fierce this year, perhaps as a result of the added incentive of national television coverage, or perhaps because the awards as a whole are becoming more widely recognised as the top community-focused awards scheme in the land. Either way, Lochwinnoch has managed to reach the final stage for the 4th year in a row which is quite an achievement. The results will be announced in November so there will be quite a bit of work going on behind the scenes on the village website.
The next big task for the summer is so achieve code validation and accessibility targets to make web content accessible to people with disabilities and to users of a variety of web-enabled devices... this will be explained in further detail shortly.
Lochwinnoch Community Council 'Highly Commended' in
internet section of community awards 2003
Lochwinnoch Community Council has been Highly Commended in the Calor Scottish Community of the Year Awards 2003 for its internet activity.
The Minister for Communities, Margaret Curran MSP announced the success at a ceremony in Edinburgh on Thursday November 25.
"When we launched this section of the awards, Lochwinnoch won the prize for best Internet proposal and just two years on they have a very popular and useful online presence," comments Gavin Tomlinson, Communications Manager for Calor Scotland.
"Against all the odds, the Lochwinnoch Community has made some major innovative moves in the availability of high speed broadband internet. The community already had a very successful website which was a core part of village life, but the whole enthusiasm was taken to a new level with the research, development and implementation of a ground-breaking broadband service."
Using a satellite, the village now has a highly effective, 54mb broadband connection. The project is now being studied by other communities, and commercial organisations, as a means of linking to the web in otherwise non-broadband areas.
The Calor Scottish Community of the Year Awards are organised by Calor Scotland in conjunction with the Association of Scottish Community Councils (ASCC) and supported by SEPA (Scottish Environment Protection Agency). The awards were launched in 1998 and over the past six years have attracted entries from hundreds of community organisations throughout Scotland. The 'Community Enhancement through the Internet' Award was introduced in 2001 to recognise that many communities in Scotland are using the internet to prevent isolation, engender community spirit, enhance communication and promote themselves to a worldwide audience.
Scottish Community of the Year 2002
Lochwinnoch wins award
"Community Enhancement Through the Internet"
Judges Special Commendation
Lochwinnoch Community Council www.lochwinnoch.info
This commendation has been given to last year's winner of the 'IT Planned' category of the Awards in recognition of what they have achieved since winning the prize.
Scottish Community of the Year 2001
Lochwinnoch wins new award
"Community Enhancement Through IT"
The fourth annual awards for the Scottish Community of the Year took place at the Norton House Hotel in Edinburgh on Tuesday 27th October. The awards, sponsored by Calor Gas, draw entries from all over Scotland under a variety of category headings: Environment, Business, Young People, Older People, Community amongst others, plus the newly created categories for those communities developing a website and for those already using a website.
Having entered the competition some months earlier, Community Council representatives, Sabita Stewart (Secretary), and the website's designer, Barbara Brown, attended the awards luncheon without knowing the result beforehand.
The winners were announced by Donnie Munro (musician, writer and Director of Development at Sabhal Mor Ostaig) and the category of "Scottish Community Enhancement Through IT 2001" was awarded to Lochwinnoch Community Council. The new award acknowledges the potential of websites to strengthen communication within local communities.
"The Scottish Community of the Year Awards are in their fourth year," commented Gavin Tomlinson Communications manager of Calor Gas Scotland. "Over the last few years we have found that an increasing number of communities have been mentioning their community websites in their award entries. To acknowledge the benefits such websites can have, for both internal communication within communities and for promotion to the wider world, we have added this important new section to this year's competition"
Announcing Lochwinnoch's success Gavin said:
"The community council's proposal is for the development of a website that will include features such as local history and visitor information, an online community newsletter and a facility for inter-village communication. It is also envisaged that the website will become a key communication tool
for the community's Development Officer"
"We are confident that once Lochwinnoch's website is active it will quickly become a valuable resource for the community."
The community council received £500 from Calor Gas Scotland for investment in professional web consultancy to help it realise it's plans.
"From a community point of view the Internet provides opportunities to prevent isolation, enhance communication and to generally foster good community spirit. It also gives communities the chance to promote tourism and highlight unique aspects of community life"