FGG Volunteers of the Year

The Cape Town Cup, the trophy awarded to FGG Volunteers of the Year, will be presented next week at the Federation of Gay Games Annual Meeting to two outstanding volunteers from South Africa.

Hlengiwe Buthelezi from Durban is a champion in mainstream competition as well as a multi-medal winner in track and field at the Gay Games. She currently serves as a delegate from FGG member organisation TOGS, and actively promotes the Gay Games in South Africa. In addition to her sports outreach to schoolchildren in remote villages, she has brought together potential competitors for Gay Games VIII, most recently in a mainstream women's road race in Durban, where nearly forty runners competed as a warm-up and promotion for Cologne.

Ian McMahon from Cape Town is a past president and current co-chair of TOGS. Ian is a leader in business and in a variety of LGBT charitable organisations. Ian has been an active volunteer and member on the Federation since 2005, and is being honoured in particular for his outstanding work organising the FGG 2008 Annual Meeting in Cape Town, which proved to be a most rewarding opportunity for members of the FGG to make new friends and establish new relationships with athletes, artists, and activists from a number of African countries.

Bonus question: Why is the Volunteer of the Year trophy known as the Cape Town Cup?
The honour of Volunteer of the Year was first awarded at the 2007 Annual Meeting in San Francisco, but there was no special trophy representing the award. During the 2008 Annual Meeting in Cape Town, the mayor of the city presented the FGG with the gift of a piece of "functional art" from noted South African designer Carrol Boyes. The gift, a cast stainless steel water jug, seemed a perfect choice to become the trophy for Volunteer of the Year, a transformation carried out with the help of a Parisian goldsmith. And it is with particular pleasure that we are able to send back -- at least for this year -- the Cape Town Cup to its place of origin to honour two South Africans, before the Cup is awarded to new volunteers at Gay Games VIII in 2010.