iT’S NOT Just an Awards Night!

We have launched a Community Fund to help support our Inspirational Award category. This fund allows the wider community to come together and ensure we continue shining a light on the incredible strength, resilience, and achievements of our Armed Forces families. Together, we can keep their stories seen and celebrated.

Celebrating Forces Families is the UK’s only national platform dedicated solely to recognising Armed Forces families. The partners, children, parents, carers and extended networks who carry so much of military life quietly, consistently, and often without acknowledgement.

Families are the backbone of our military community. They navigate separation, mobility, uncertainty and loss while still building communities, volunteering, creating support networks, and holding space for others. They are resilient, innovative, and deeply compassionate — not because they have to be perfect, but because service life asks a lot of them. 

Over the years, we’ve met people whose impact extends far beyond what anyone might expect.

People like Claire Lilly, who turned the unimaginable grief of losing her former husband into action. Through the Forcer Protocol, she has helped create a nationwide strategy for locating vulnerable missing veterans and connecting them with veteran-specific support, working alongside Greater Manchester Police and other agencies to spare other families the anguish she experienced.

We’ve seen young people like Jamie, who faced the loss of his father to suicide at just eight years old and chose to speak openly about it. He created a film with the Army, raised funds, and used his voice to support others living with loss and vulnerability, transforming trauma into connection and hope.

There are children like Alfie-Jon, a ten-year-old living with autism, whose love of sending post has quietly brought joy to thousands. Since 2021, he has handwritten and delivered more than 3,000 cards to military families, veterans and care home residents, small acts of kindness that ripple far beyond what anyone sees.

There are professionals like Chelsea Tudhope, an NHS midwife who has dedicated herself to supporting Armed Forces families navigating maternal mental health. Through advocacy, research and frontline care, she has worked to address inequalities and ensure military families feel understood during some of the most vulnerable moments of their lives.

And there are stories like Jilly’s. After losing her husband, she faced eviction, pension challenges, and the reality of raising two daughters while navigating systems not built for bereaved service families. Instead of stepping back, she founded Beyond the Wire CIC, creating practical support, advocacy and change so other families don’t face the same barriers alone.

These stories are extraordinary. But they are not rare.

They are happening quietly, every day, across the Armed Forces community.

That’s why Celebrating Forces Families matters.

Because these individuals don’t just inspire for one evening. They build charities. They create social enterprises. They run support groups. They volunteer. They check in on others. They hold communities together in ways that allow their spouses and family members to serve.

They are, quite simply, the heroes behind the heroes.

And yet, like many of the people we celebrate, Celebrating Forces Families itself is volunteer-led. It’s a CIC, powered by time, passion, and belief in the importance of recognition. The reality is that bringing this platform to life each year relies on sponsorship and support, and in a challenging economic climate, that isn’t always easy to secure.

So this year, we’re doing something a little different.

We’re launching the CFF Community Fund to support our Inspirational Award category, inviting the community itself to help ensure these stories continue to be seen and celebrated.

Every contribution, however small, helps us continue telling these stories, stories of resilience, hope, loss, courage, humour, and connection. Stories that remind people they are part of something bigger. Stories that offer hope to someone quietly struggling.

Supporting the Community Fund isn’t just supporting an award. It’s helping keep the platform alive. It’s helping ensure Armed Forces families remain visible, not just on one evening, but throughout the year.

There is nothing else quite like this in the UK!

If you feel able to support the Community Fund, here’s the crowdfunder page:

https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/celebrating-forces-families---community-award 

If donating isn’t possible right now, sharing the page helps enormously too, it’s how these stories travel, and how this platform stays alive.

Because this isn’t just an awards night.

It’s a movement.
A platform.
A community.

And one that so many families deserve!