HEROS Charity Wins the Animal Category at the BBC Radio Berkshire Make a Difference Awards

HEROS charity is honoured and thrilled to win the Animal Category at the BBC Berkshire Make a Difference Awards.  

HEROS CEO and Founder, Grace Muir accompanied by members of the HEROS Team, attended the glittering BBC Make a Difference Awards Ceremony at Reading Town Hall on Tuesday 3rd September.

The room was full of the awards finalists, who were all amazing and inspirational people who, do unbelievable things in their communities to help people, animals and the environment.

The Animal Award was new category for 2024 and HEROS was firstly very honoured to be one of the four finalists and then when Team GB Olympian Morgan Lake announced that HEROS had won, Grace Muir and her team were simply blown away.

Lake commented on video that she had chosen HEROS as the winner not only because HEROS supports the welfare of animals, but also allows children and young people to thrive, in an environment that truly to displays that change is possible.

Grace Muir accepted the award that was presented by BBC Berkshire’s Andy Jones and commented: ‘Wow, how exciting, we can’t believe it, we are just so excited, we didn’t actually think we would win, because what strong competition we were up against. I’m so proud of HEROS, my team and we are really all truly honoured to win this award.

This has been my life’s work, I’ve been striving to get where we are for forever and our journey isn’t over, we are setting up more programmes all the time. So, the opportunity to attend the Awards Ceremony and share the message about the work we do at HEROS, the impact that our amazing horses and the incredible setting of HEROS has on people’s lives, is just fantastic and very special. Thank you so much to BBC Berkshire and of course to Morgan Lake for choosing HEROS.’

HEROS Charity, is British Horse Racing’s Aftercare Lead, working in partnership with RoR on aftercare provisions for former racehorses. Since HEROS started in 2006, it has retrained and rehomed 100’s of former racehorses, working hard to find the most suitable new life for each individual thoroughbred that comes through the HEROS retraining programme.

In 2015, HEROS diversified and started HEROS Education and now welcomes up to 65 students aged between 11 and 16 a week with Special Educational Needs (SEN). They also run a post 16 Diploma courses for SEN students with EHCPs, with a view to finding them relevant equine jobs at the end of it. HEROS uses former racehorses as a catalyst to spark inspiration into SEN students. The synergy in educating both horses and students is a unique model, that works brilliantly well for both.