Claire Bruce, Director, has received the honour of the Sunday Mail Great Scot Award in the #ScotSpirit category, sponsored by VisitScotland, on October 29 at the Doubletree Hilton Hotel in Glasgow.
The Sunday Mail Great Scot Awards is Scotland’s biggest awards ceremony, championing everything that’s great about Scotland and its local communities. For 26 years, the Awards have been honouring ordinary people whose stories of courage, determination and selflessness that make the nation proud.
The award recognised Claire’s efforts in rallying businesses, communities and public sector organisations to come together following Storm Frank that devastated many parts of Aberdeenshire, leaving families homeless and businesses destroyed.
Following the storm, Claire helped to house affected residents from Ballater and the surrounding areas who had lost their homes. She was instrumental in helping with immediate clean-up efforts across the area, bringing together businesses, volunteers, the staff of Glen Tanar and many others to minimise the impact of the flood. A month after the flood Claire organised a conference for local business owners, academics, industry experts and the public sector to bring awareness to the recovery needs, environmental impact and encourage collaboration to put Deeside back on the tourism map and ‘Open for Business’.
Claire said: “I am honoured and incredibly humbled to be recognised with the Great Scot Award but it wasn’t just me. Storm Frank was a 1 in 500 year flood which dramatically changed the landscape and affected over 300 homes and 60 businesses – which is a monumental number in a rural area such as Deeside. Many agencies and volunteers worked in partnership and together tackled the problems in a direct pragmatic way.
After the Storm I felt compelled to do everything in my power to help the clean-up and re-building process but so did so many other people.
What we have to remember is that whilst there has been a hugely effective clean-up process there are still around 50 families not back in their homes 10 months on. The local businesses and families affected by Storm Frank are the epitome of #ScotSpirit for showing resilience in adversity and bouncing back so positively from a natural disaster that could easily have broken our community, whereas Deeside is stronger than ever.”