Ferndown teenager makes Headway and gets a top award (From Bournemouth Echo)

Ferndown teenager makes Headway and gets a top award

7:10pm Monday 14th December 2009

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A SIXTEEN-year-old whose efforts have led others to be safer on the road has been named Campaigner of the Year.

Tom Kelly has spent two years encouraging people to wear bicycle helmets and raising money for Headway, the brain injury association.

The Ferndown Upper School student was caught by his mum Imogen Pearce cycling home from school without a helmet.

Having worked as a nurse, she had seen head injuries firsthand.

Headway Dorset introduced Tom to Alex Mottram, whose brain injury caused after falling off his bike as a teenager changed his personality.

Tom, who lives in West Parley, was so moved he vowed never to get on his cycle without a helmet again, and to make sure his friends did the same.

He joined the school council as its fundraising and charity representative, has spoken out and raised the profile of Headway Dorset and cycle helmets, has raised £4,000 in the last two years for the charity and has further events planned.

Mum Imogen said Tom was delighted at winning, and chatting to Victoria Cross hero Johnson Beharry was “a complete bonus”.

“We knew he had been nominated back in the summer but I don’t even tell him he had been nominated because I thought it was unlikely to come to anything.”

Peter McCabe, chief executive of Headway, said: “Tom is a wonderful example to us all.”

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