THE Yellow Guernsey Award – a campaign dedicated to recognising active travel role models with a bespoke yellow guernsey – has been relaunched this year, with the first guernsey awarded to 18-year-old Sixth Form Centre student Monty Desforges.
Delivered by the Health Improvement Commission in collaboration with the Better Journeys Project and with the help of Le Tricoteur, the campaign is inspired by charity Cycling UK’s choice to replicate the yellow jerseys given to Tour de France leader, giving them to an active travel leader in the community.
‘We want to champion people in the island who encourage other people to cycle,’ said Health Improvement Commission Be Active lead Alex Costen.
‘Monty is young and passionate, and clearly a great inspiration and role model to his peers.’
As well as being a dedicated active traveller himself, Monty has become a leading advocate – at the Sixth Form Centre and beyond – in favour of active travel.
In the past six months, he and a team of like-minded schoolmates have created a scheme to enable their fellow students to borrow bikes if they do not have their own, and have done extensive advocacy work in the community, including arranging last week’s ‘Meet the Deputies’ event which highlighted active travel issues to States members.
‘I think what this really represents to me is all the work that the whole team back at school has put in,’ he said.
‘It’s been a massive half a year for all of us, and I’m really, really proud of it.’
Monty attributed his passion for active travel to a vision of how the island might be improved by reducing the number of cars on the roads.
‘I’ve been lucky enough to travel to Europe – to Poland, Denmark – where everybody cycles, where there’s a lot of active travel infrastructure,’ he said.
‘I’ve just seen the difference it makes.
‘As I was cycling here, down the west coast in the lovely weather, there were all these cars thundering past, and I just thought how much of a better time those people would be having if they were outside and on bikes.
‘That’s what really drives me – the knowledge of just how much better this island would be if everyone embraced active travel.’
The yellow guernsey campaign was relaunched with sponsorship from Mourant and the support of the Tom Dorey Eco Legacy – a fund set up in honour of the last yellow guernsey winner, Tom Dorey, who tragically died not long afterwards.
His mother Laurence attended the award’s relaunching.
‘I feel very privileged to have been invited,’ she said.
‘I’m very, very proud to be continuing my son’s desires and eco-efforts.
‘I think that it is a very good thing to mark the efforts made to improve travelling on the island.’
The yellow guernsey given as an award was a bespoke product of Le Tricoteur – the traditional, hand-crafting guernsey makers – woven in a ‘sunshine yellow’ wool that is not otherwise available.
More Yellow Guernsey Award nominees are expected to receive the jumpers in the coming months, as the Health Improvement Commission aims to open up nominations to the public, and declare a winner up to four times a year.
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