E Lancs folk have a great reason to be proud

This is the Lancashire Evening Telegraph's biggest ever community campaign and we want to have as much to celebrate as possible so we need your help.

It is a joint initiative with East Lancashire Partnership, aims to find the area's outstanding community members and unsung heroes and to highlight their stories.

We believe East Lancashire has a great deal to be proud of, not least the thousands of fantastic local people who work tirelessly to help others.

And we need readers to nominate their friends, relatives, colleagues and themselves for our 11 awards.

The categories are: Child of Courage, Outstanding Volunteer, Community Group, Neighbour of the Year, Outstanding Young Volunteer, Community/Social Enterprise, Spirit of Sport, Outstanding Vocational Worker, Gift of Life, Grass Roots Champion and Readers' Choice.

The campaign climaxes in November at a glittering Oscars-style awards ceremony, where individual winners will receive a £2,000 holiday and £1,000 cash, while group victors will win £3,000 to spend on their project.

As well as working towards the awards, the campaign aims to celebrate East Lancashire's achievements and achievers past and present.

So far we have received more than 150 nominations for the awards, but some categories are more popular than others.

We know there must be lots of young volunteers out there who are doing good work for their communities, but we need you to tell us then we can give them the recognition they deserve.

Similarly, there have been few nominations under the Community/ Social Enterprise category, which is to reward organisations that promote training and employment for socially excluded people in community-owned businesses.

If you know of anyone who deserves to have their good deeds acknowledged, under any category, log on to www.thisislancashire.co.uk or complete a coupon in the Lancashire Evening Telegraph or Citizens. Nominations must be received before September 30.