A charity has gone from strength to strength since winning an Examiner community award last year.

One Good Turn led by Sophia Crawshaw has expanded its work, raised its profile and believe triumphing in the Friend of the Year category has even helped it to apply for grants.

This time last year the charity just covered the south Kirklees area which was basically Huddersfield.

But now it covers the whole of Kirklees and the number of volunteers has grown from 40 to more than 60.

Sophia, of Marsh, suffers with a chronic condition ME and even though she worked for Kirklees Council 24 hours a week she founded One Good Turn in 2011 and worked tirelessly for the last four years, giving up all her free time and weekends to developing the charity.

She works up to 60 hours a week for One Good Turn (OGT) and has put together a team of dedicated volunteers all working at least five hours a week and some even full-time to implement the charity’s objective.

This is to help the most needy people in society, providing essentials such as white goods, furniture and carpets and also to provide emotional, practical and group support to some of the most vulnerable people in the area.

OGT holds a coffee morning every Wednesday at the Methodist Mission with up to 150 people attending with the charity helping victims of domestic violence to seek help and also referring people to adult literacy classes and other groups. Hundreds of families have benefited from the charity’s work.

Some of the latest schemes are Give And Take events which are basically free jumble sales in deprived areas.

The charity turns up with a van full of clothes, toys, games and bric-a-brac and people can help themselves to what they need.

Events have been held in Birkby, Cleckheaton, Chickenley, Batley and Birstall.

And then next major scheme will be a suits service.

The charity is working closely with a major bank to have suits donated for men and women.

This means that if unemployed people are offered an interview but have nothing suitable to wear they can get a free suit from One Good Turn at very short notice.

Sophia added: “The awards night was a lovely event which gave us the credibility we needed. It even helped us to access grants.”