East Sussex WRAS founder Trevor Weeks MBE was nominated for and won the Animal Welfare Award in the BBC Radio Sussex and Surrey Community Heroes Awards at Wakehurst Place, Ardingly, on Thursday 13th December 2012.
Almost two months since receiving his MBE Trevor Weeks attended the prestigious awards after being nominated in the first ever Animal Welfare Award run by the BBC local radio. Virginia McKenna presented the Animal Welfare Award to Trevor towards the end of the evening. Virginia McKenna is best remembered for her 1966 role as Joy Adamson in the true-life film Born Free for which she received a nomination for a Golden Globe. Bill Travers, her real life husband, co-starred with her, portraying conservationist George Adamson, and the experience led them to become active supporters for wild animal rights and the protection of their natural habitat. Virginia McKenna appeared in An Elephant Called Slowly, a travelogue of what it was like years ago in Kenya. The film features her close friend conservationist George Adamson and also elephants Eleanor (brought up by conservationist Daphne Sheldrick) and young Pole Pole. The subsequent premature death of Pole Pole in London Zoo lead to Virginia McKenna and her husband launching the Zoo Check Campaign in 1984 and to establishing the "Born Free Foundation" in 1991.