THE smiling faces of the elderly people Keith Raper helps is payment enough for this Volunteer of the Year nominee.

Keith has been nominated by his wife, Carol, for a York Community Pride Award for his weekend voluntary work at Hartrigg Oaks, a continuing care retirement community at New Earswick where she works.

For the past 16 years Keith has worked as a store man for the Joseph Rowntree Housing Trust and in his spare time he helps out at the Hartrigg Oaks by taking residents out on day trips and pushing their wheelchairs.

He said: "It's all about putting smiles on people's faces. We take the residents out to local villages and stately homes to give them a change of scenery and they enjoy it immensely.

"I'm a big believer in what goes around comes around and we have always been well treated by the older generation and I'm just trying to put a bit back."

Keith, 51, recently helped bring in a tonne of sand to the garden at Hartrigg Oaks for residents to have a beach day.

To nominate your community heroes, fill in the entry form on this page, remembering to include the category for which you are entering, and giving reasons on no more than two sides of A4 paper.

Our judges will select three finalists in each category, and winners will be announced at an awards ceremony on December 1.

A big finance company has thrown its weight behind the York Community Pride awards.

Norwich Union, which employs about 3,000 people in York, has agreed to sponsor the whole of our campaign to find the city's true community heroes. The finance giant was also the first to sponsor an individual award - the Volunteer of the Year category.

Norwich Union's corporate social responsibility manager Andrew Morgan said he was "very excited" that the company was the overall sponsor for the campaign, which also includes sponsorship of the York Community Pride Person of the Year award.

He said: "We are very pleased to be doing it. It's part of our overall commitment that we put something back in the city.

"If the initiative can motivate more people to get involved and take an active role - then that would be really good."

Updated: 12:55 Thursday, August 12, 2004