2023 Winner
DELORES AND HECTOR PINKNEY
Inspiring sibling activists and volunteers who have spent 50 years serving their community.
Delores and Hector grew up with activist parents, and have built on their work to create a legacy of their own. Volunteering and advocating for others certainly runs in the family.
Rudolph and Mavis Pinkney’s home in Leonard Road became a community hub following their arrival from Jamaica in 1954. The pair also helped establish the UK’s first independent black organisation – The African Caribbean Self-Help Organisation.
Known affectionately as ‘Mr Handsworth,’ Hector, 70, is a former security officer at Handsworth Library and has mentored hundreds of young people during his career. He worked hard to make the library a safe space for everyone; taking it upon himself to open up the rooms, providing everything from coffee mornings and talent contests, to senior running clubs and exercise classes.
“If somebody fall down, somebody got to be there to pick them up, I am that person,” he says.
His sister Delores, 71, a retired bank clerk, is just as active and has spent five decades volunteering in the area around their Birmingham home. She set up the Dojo project – supporting elderly people from the BAME community – and during lockdown they stepped up their services, providing food parcels, welfare checks, support and advice. Despite being pensioners themselves, the siblings continue to open their homes to anyone who needs a helping hand.