Kev Dillon and Lee Cadman from Lions Boxing Club, Brierley Hill, are to receive the King's Award for services to volunteering.

Transcript

00:00Okay, so Kevin and Lee, you both run the Lions Boxing Club here in Brierley Hill

00:04and you've been awarded the King's Award, well you found out

00:09you're going to get the King's Award, haven't you, for voluntary work, is that

00:13right? We've got the King's Award for the Black Country Blokes, the podcast, I'm the

00:17head coach at Lions ABC, Lee is one of my coaches and we started the podcast five

00:22years ago Lee? Yeah, 2019. Yeah, fantastic. So just explain what that's all about, what

00:28does that involve? So the podcast, it's called the Black Country Blokes, it's a CIC and

00:33what we initially set out to do was raise awareness of men's mental

00:36health by talking about men's mental health and getting guests on to do the

00:39same. It's kind of evolved from there where now there's kind of no subject

00:44off-limits, we talk about mental health, disabilities and life in general. Yeah,

00:49yeah, so did that originate here at the club? That started off here, I have to say like

00:54I've got more baggage than Heathrow Airport and I've had all these problems

00:57going through life, so has Lee and then we just got together with Aaron Jew and

01:02Craig Pinches, there's four of us and they've had to drop off for reasons but it was

01:06such a big subject and now here after COVID, I open up every day, Monday to Friday so

01:11men can come and train for free and then women can come and train because what we found

01:15when we're doing our support groups in lockdown, it was great but men are better

01:19when they're training, they train, they sweat and they naturally talk and because

01:22they know we talk so openly about mental health, they feel that they can

01:26just talk about anything and anything so men want to talk, they just don't feel

01:30safe to talk. So they're not just physical benefits from coming here, it's mental

01:34benefits too, you know, if people feel, you know, the freedom to talk about

01:38issues like that really. Best friend of any mental health is loneliness, feeling

01:42like you're the only person and that's why we're releasing This Is Me This

01:46Is Us, showing us on our good days and on our bad days and getting like-minded souls

01:49from different boxing clubs, different organisations, from different colours,

01:53creeds, from 12 to 67. Mental health can affect anyone at any time so let's not

01:59shy away from it, let's show together we stand, together we can. So how does it

02:04feel to know you're going to get the award, the King's Award? It's shocking

02:09really, it was quite a long process to get to the point that we've

02:13actually won it but it's more of a shock because there's so many great

02:16organisations out there that do wonderful things and so yeah, I think we

02:19were kind of both shocked but really proud of ourselves and all the people

02:24that help out, all the guests that come on, you know, without all of it we

02:28wouldn't have won it so yeah, it's proud. I'm glad to know that we're helping people as well, you know, it recognises that help.

02:34Absolutely, it's a great achievement guys and congratulations. Thank you very much.