NICOLA Black was sure one of her colleagues was winding her up when she received an email around a month ago telling her she had been made an MBE.

But her credentials in working with the Parkhead community she has served for years are no joke - and neither was the prestigious honour.

The head of Parkhead Community Nursery was recognised in this year’s round of awards for her dedication for teaching infants in the East End for pioneering the use of early years centres as food bank distribution points.

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“The nursery has shaped me into who I am and the staff in there have all trained me,” the 45-year-old said. 

“The community is my favourite thing about working at the nursery and they have shown such strength and resilience through difficult and challenging times.

“My motto is: If you don’t ask, you don’t get. I know that if I pick up the phone to get help from one of our partners in the community I will get it. 

“I’m from Easterhouse so I know all the horrible tags that get put on this place but I really try to think of it as a thriving community.”

The nursery is getting a new building in the middle of Tollcross Park next year which Nicola is greatly looking forward to. 

She said: “How beautiful will that be for the children? To open their doors and be out in the great outdoors. A lot of these children come from flats with no garden.”

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Nicola’s award is not just for her, she said, but all of her colleagues in early years, “who have really gone above and beyond during this whole horrible Covid experience”, and for the children whose lives she has helped shape.

With the aid of groups like PEEK and Community of Helping Hands, she helped deliver food parcels to self-isolating families during the height of the first wave of coronavirus earlier this year. 

An experienced hand at getting families in desperate circumstances food when they need it, Nicola told how some years ago she cut out the middleman for families needing food bank vouchers by making it so that they could come directly to her for vouchers. She later set up an emergency food bank within the nursery that parents could access. 

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“It just took the stigma away for families,” she said. “Rather than them having to go to someone they didn’t know.”

She describes the first time she went to a food bank, in Helenvale Street, as an “astonishing and humbling experience”. 

Nicola started at the East End nursery when she was just 15 on a work experience placement and she has worked in every position at the centre as well as a career which has taken her from Castlemilk to Knightswood before finding herself as the boss at Parkhead.