A WOMAN with a passion for green space will stop at nothing to continue transforming her local park alongside the community group she set-up

Naz Kosar, who started the Friends of Bradford Moor Park group, won the Volunteer of the Year Award at the Community Stars Awards last Wednesday.

There were 1,663 votes in the category in total, with Mrs Kosar receiving the lion's share of those (1,142).

The other finalists were, Gloria Heibron and Beryl and Roy Falkingham

Mrs Kosar said on receiving her award: "Thank you to everyone who's voted for me.

"I'd like to start by saying, this isn't just about me and my group, our park family and we've all done it together.

"People from different communities have come together and shown that they really care about Bradford.

"It doesn't matter from which walk of life, whether you've had an affluent upbringing, or whether you've had challenges in life, we're all one.

"It doesn't matter the colour of your skin, doesn't matter where you come from, Bradford is the place to be and Bradford Moor Park's going to show everyone."

The group was set-up by Mrs Kosar when she visited her beloved Bradford Moor Park three years ago and was shocked at what she saw.

A Facebook group followed in summer 2020 and the Friends of Bradford Moor Park have not looked back since, with more than 2,000 members now having joined.

She said: "I set-up the group because this is where my childhood was and when I visited in 2019, there was nothing here.

"There was two junior swings, slides and I could see some anti-social behaviour, drug-dealing taking place.

"It wasn't a safe space for young people to come and play.

"So in the past two years we've done, clean-ups, we've done activity days, we've held many events with the local community."

One of the clean-ups involved a major operation with the duck pond in the park in June 2021, which had turned green due to it being infested with litter, algae and other unholy items over the years.

Mrs Shah herself was not afraid to muck in and got into the dirty water to help remove the problematic items, alongside a number of volunteers.

The clean-up lasted for around three hours and a "staggering amount" of litter was taken out of the pond, including two traffic cones and two licence plates.

Yasar Mohammed, who is part of the Friends of Bradford Moor Park group, said about Mrs Kosar: "She had a vision, to transform this park.

"She's very passionate about making a change in this park.

"I thought she's done really brilliant in terms of getting the community together, so it's all come together and you can see it's absolutely brilliant."

Bradford Moor Park's play area was included on a list issued by Bradford Council this month of playgrounds that will upgraded as part of the £1.6m second wave of works in The Playable Spaces Strategy.