A LEADING local businessman, a children’s author, local campaigner and the founder of a local radio station will be honoured by Bradford College this week.

The University Centre at the college will bestow honorary awards at graduation events today and tomorrow.

Accepting the prestigious honour this year will be Amjad Pervez, the founding partner of Bradford-based Seafresh Foods, award-winning children’s author Robert Swindells, Saorsa Tweedale, who founded the Bradford-based support group Trans Positive, and Mary Dowson, the founder of BCB Radio.

They will join hundreds of college higher education students at the ceremonies at the LIFE Centre.

Students of teaching, applied science and social care and community practice will be taking to the stage today to collect their certificates. Then, tomorrow it will be the turn of students graduating from courses in business, law, services management, arts and creative industries to celebrate.

Amjad Pervez is being recognised for his contribution to business. He went from owning one corner shop to running the Seafresh food wholesaling and Adams cash and carry businesses and employing nearly 300 people locally, and many more across the globe through the company’s supply networks.

Having moved to Bradford from Pakistan as a 10-year-old, in 1970, he studied A-levels at Bradford College before gaining a degree in business and marketing and then setting up his own business.

Robert Swindells, who has written more than 60 books for children, left school with no O-levels but returned to education as a mature student and passed five O-levels at Bradford College. Aged 33, he qualified as a teacher and spent eight years teaching in Bradford primary schools before leaving the profession to focus full-time on writing.

In 1994 he won the Carnegie Medal for children’s literature with Stone Cold, a story about homelessness amongst young people.

Mary Dowson is one of the founders of the award-winning BCB radio – Bradford Community Broadcasting. She hails from London but has Bradford in her heart, having arrived in the city as a student in the 1970s and later working as a youth worker in Manningham and a teacher at the college.

The station began as Bradford Festival Radio and was granted its own licence more than 20 years ago.

Saorsa Tweedale’s award acknowledges her efforts to promote LGBTQ equality in the district, with particular appreciation for her work on transgender issues.

She completed a Masters in the Politics of Visual Representation at the college in 1999, and is an out and visible transgender woman who founded the Bradford-based social support group Trans-Positive.