Sandwell Council apprentice Callum Hixon, age 17 has been awarded the very first Darren Cooper Award at the annual Sandwell College Business Awards event.

Callum, a former student at ACE Academy Tipton, started with Sandwell Council a year ago working in the revenues and benefits team. He is also studying towards a Level 2 business administration qualification.

Callum has been singled out by his colleagues as being an outstanding employee. He has learned the skills to do his job very quickly and is always eager to learn more.

Callum was thrilled to win this award and saw off some stiff competition. He said: "I was very surprised to have won this award. I would like to thank everyone who has supported me along the way to help me achieve this. I am very grateful for the opportunities I have been given."

The Darren Cooper Award was set up in memory of the late leader of Sandwell Council who passed away in March 2016.

The award was set up to recognise outstanding apprentices and is judged by Sandwell Council’s apprentices team.

Callum was presented with the award at the Sandwell College Business Awards held at Sandwell College, West Bromwich by Councillor Simon Hackett. He said: “In the short time Callum has been with the council he has shown a real willingness to learn and picked things up quickly.

“I want to congratulate Callum on getting this award and wish him all the best with his qualifications and the rest of his apprenticeship.”

New research by the Spirit of Christmas Fair, the UK’s leading high-end Christmas shopping event, has found that our friends are by far, the most likely to suffer as a result of our “gift envy”. 7 in 10 people in the UK admitted that they have purchased gifts for their friends, only to decide that they would rather keep it themselves. A small percentage (6%) also admitted that they would even steal from their children.

The full list of those we experience gift envy with, who we purchase gifts for but decide to keep for ourselves:

1. Friends (70%)
2. Acquaintances (8%)
3. Parents (7%)
4. Children (6%)
5. Colleagues (5%)
6. Partner (3%)
7. Parents-in-law (1%)

Most of people also feel that they have great taste when it comes to choosing gifts with 66% stating that they always choose a gift they would like themselves, regardless of whether the recipient would choose it, because “if I like it, they will like it”.

The research has also proved that “retail therapy” is real with 71% of people in the UK admitting that shopping is their most therapeutic experience.

Thi Dinh, Retailer Expert & Show Manager at the Spirit of Christmas Fair says:

“Retailers traditionally see significant uplift in the number of people beginning their festive shopping in late October, early November. This prime shopping period is one of the most important times for both high street retailers and independent boutiques as they showcase their big-ticket items among affluent shoppers who tend to begin their festive shopping earlier than most.

However, our new consumer research found that shoppers tend to use this time to their advantage, by literally shopping for themselves. It’s extremely common for shoppers to act on something we call “gift envy” – that is when people cannot bear to part with a gift they have purchased for others, so much so that they decide to keep it for themselves. Many go so far as to keep gifts back from their parents, and even their children.

And it seems that retail therapy really does exist, with a significant majority of people (71%) stating that they find it to be a therapeutic experience. And if during the experience, they manage to pick up a gift for themselves, I’m sure that also plays a role in contributing to the pleasure of shopping.”

City Year UK volunteer Holly O’Shea, from Selly Oak, Birmingham, has been awarded one of the first Domino’s ODEs - Order of the Domino’s Empire - in recognition of her charity work.

Loughborough University student Holly, 20, will now receive free pizza from Domino’s for a year after being nominated for the award by her boyfriend Jonah.

Holly is spending her placement year volunteering full-time with City Year UK at Bristnall Hall Academy in Oldbury, where she serves as a mentor and role model to pupils as part of a team.

As part of Bristnall Hall’s inaugural Lighthouse Team, Holly serves as a peer mentor to the pupils, being a part of their school day from breakfast club to homework club. As well as taking a whole school approach, each member of the team has a focus list of pupils who particularly benefit from extra support, which could be related to attendance, behaviour or curriculum results.

City Year UK is a youth social action charity which believes that through a year of full-time volunteering, 18 to 25-year-olds can make a real difference to the life chances of school pupils from the most disadvantaged communities, whilst gaining valuable leadership experience and boosting their own career prospects.

Holly said: “Winning this award was honestly such an amazing surprise! Helping people already comes with so much satisfaction and to receive this recognition on top of that is really just an incredible extra.”

As well as giving her time to volunteer with City Year, Holly was also the youngest ever athlete to compete in the Dubai Ironman Challenge to raise money for Palestinian refugees and spent a summer teaching children in Uganda how to read and write. Whilst at university at Loughborough she ran campaigns to support the LGBT community.

Each recipient was presented with the pizza-shaped ODE medal and will receive free, freshly made Domino’s pizza for a year. Only a limited number of people are being awarded the honour each year, based on nominations from the public via Domino’s UK Facebook page.

Sandwell libraries are running a number of free iPads for Beginners courses.

These are being run in partnership with Sandwell Adult and Family Learning Service and will take place at Central (West Bromwich), Blackheath, Oldbury, Smethwick, Tipton and Wednesbury libraries.

The library will provide the iPad to use during each two-hour lesson, and the full course lasts six weeks. The lessons are for beginners who may have an iPad and don’t know how to get the best out of it, or for anyone who is thinking of using one.

The next courses will begin later this month (November), and new courses will be started throughout this year and next year.

National disabled people’s charity Revitalise has a mystery on its hands…

Revitalise recently launched ‘Wish You Were Here’, a campaign to highlight the importance of holidays, fronted by the charity’s Vice President Dame Judi Dench, shortly to be embroiled in a whodunnit of her own in cinemas as Princess Dragomiroff in ‘Murder on the Orient Express’.

The Wish You Were Here campaign is inviting celebrities to send the charity a doodle or some words about a treasured holiday memory on specially designed postcards.

All the postcards received so far, from celebrities such as Sir Ian McKellen, Emma Thompson, Christopher Eccleston, Warwick Davis and Zoe Wanamaker CBE, have been signed – with the exception of five (actually, says the charity, one of the five has been signed, it’s just we can’t work out the signature!).

Revitalise is now calling on the celebrities in question to come forward and claim credit for their contributions.

The mystery postcards can be seen on the Revitalise’s website, www.revitalise.org.uk. Supporters are also welcome to offer up their own theories and leads as to the identity of the celebrity contributors, including translating the mystery signature. Revitalise has come up with a special hashtag, #whosedoodle, for this purpose.

The charity devised Wish You Were Here to highlight the importance of holidays, especially for disabled people and carers, who find getting away particularly difficult. The campaign celebrates the sharing of holiday memories, since the opportunity to share one’s stories with others is something we all love about a good holiday.

Revitalise is to hold a special exhibition of the postcards it receives next year. The celebrity contributions will then be auctioned to raise much-needed funds for the charity, so it is important that all the postcards be ascribed to the individuals who drew or wrote them.

Revitalise CEO Chris Simmonds commented:

“Here at Revitalise we love a mystery, and all we know about these unsigned cards is that each one was contributed by a celebrity. So who are the ‘Famous Five’?

“If we can’t put names to the postcards we won’t be able to auction them, so there’s a lot at stake!

“That’s why we’ll be posting the mystery celebrity postcards on our website and social media and urging the mystery celebrities to come forward and claim credit for their handiwork.”

The mystery celebrities are urged to claim their handiwork and send Revitalise a signed picture so that the postcards can be auctioned to raise money for the charity’s vital work. Celebrities can contact Revitalise directly or make themselves known to the charity on social media, using the hashtag #whosedoodle.