WHEN Barclays Bank asked for help with a day of volunteering last October, Margaret Ellison was at the head of the queue.

The people development manager at Barclays IT centre in Knutsford, Cheshire, led a team of 40 in the venture to help four Blackburn primary schools and hasn't stopped since.

The initial project, in association with Darwen Education Action Zone and Venture Zone, included revamping the library at St Anthony's Primary School, building an outdoor classroom by cutting back woodland, digging paths, creating raised flowerbeds and planting a willow arch at Lower Darwen Primary School, revamping the main entrance to St Aiden's Primary School and redecorating two large classrooms at Intack Primary School.

For her efforts Margaret, 32, of Watling Gate, Brockhole Village, has now been nominated for our Pride of East Lancashire Outstanding Volunteer Award.

A spokesman for Barclays said: "Margaret Ellison is a true motivator and champion to her local community. "She is an inspiration to her colleagues and friends and uses her volunteering as a positive experience at work too.

"She said recently that whenever the team is faced with something they think they can't do, they cast their minds back to

what they did in October at the schools and think 'if we can do that, we can do anything.'"

She says Margaret, who did the volunteering in her own time, has also given up her time to tend the gardens of elderly residents in Knutsford and erect an outdoor classroom at Save the Family near Chester.

Back in East Lancashire she operates a sharing scheme between her grandmother and friends, where she drives among the elderly group and swaps magazines, books and jigsaws.

Margaret will next be leading a team from Barclays in September to create a vegetable garden and outdoor classroom at St Andrew's Primary School, off Scotland Bank Terrace, Blackburn.

She said: "For Barclays the volunteering is an alternative to team-building exercises and works really well.

"It also helps get people into volunteering who might not know how to get involved and that then benefits schools and charities.

"I most enjoy the organising side of it myself and then seeing the difference it makes to communities."