内容摘要：Ms McCourt said she grew up with an interest in aeroplanes along with "the conflict felt as a queer kid growing up in Bomber County".

Ms McCourt said she grew up with an interest in aeroplanes along with "the conflict felt as a queer kid growing up in Bomber County".

Bosses at Wolverhampton Art Gallery said the initiative had welcomed them from all walks of life – with 48 regular volunteers who have given a combined total of almost 13,000 hours of their time over the past year."I think it gives me more confidence and has helped show me I am more capable than I believed," one of the volunteers, John, said.

Their duties include welcoming visitors and helping with workshops and events, with their ages ranging from 18 to 81.John added that being part of the programme helped him get out of his house and to stay active."I work with nice people and have made some new friends," he said.

Volunteers are asked to volunteer a minimum of four hours per week and are given training.Another, Kieran, first started helping at the gallery during a work placement organised by Walsall College and he remained afterwards.

"Helping out with craft club and showing new volunteers around gives me the confidence to have a go at things and learn new skills that I never knew were there," he said.

"They help bring our exhibitions and events to life by creating a welcoming environment for visitors and sharing in the stories behind the art," said councillor Chris Burden, from the City of Wolverhampton Council.Faced with these health and environmental hazards, the young green entrepreneurs behind Sustenta tried to come up with a solution which would not only give businesses an incentive to dispose of their oil and grease properly, but also turn these waste products into something useful.

The NGO's executive director, Ricardo Pineda, explains that their idea originated from earlier efforts by different companies and organisations to transform used cooking oil into biodiesel. "But in Honduras, we don't have a market for biodiesel," he says."So we decided to produce products that can do well in our domestic markets [such as soap and dog food]."

In order to make it more attractive to people to get rid of the oil legally rather than sell it to unscrupulous buyers, Sustenta offers to buy the used cooking oil and pick it up regularly from the shops that participate in their project.Their efforts have gained international recognition, most notably when they were awarded a $20,000-prize as one of the winners of the 2023 Youth4Climate Energy Challenge, a global initiative co-led by the Italian government and the United Nations Development Programme.