Vintage Radio is a community radio station in Birkenhead set up and run entirely by older people for older people.

They started broadcasting in February 2009 and have given 60 volunteers aged over 50, many of whom have no previous radio experience, the chance to develop the station and present a range of programmes aimed at listeners aged over 50 in the local area. This is not the first award they've won. In London in September 2009, at the Counsel + Care Older People in the Media Awards, Vintage Radio was presented with the runner-up award by Lord Heseltine in the category for 'Radio Station Showing Older People in the Best Light'.

According to those involved, Vintage Radio transforms lives through radically improving older peoples' confidence and self-esteem, and equipping them with new skills they had never previously anticipated acquiring. Older people, they believe, are often disadvantaged through increasing infirmity, the loss of a social network through retiring from work and, most traumatically, bereavement. There are many ways out of social isolation or exclusion and Vintage Radio provides an extremely positive, and even therapeutic, way to fuller lives for older people.

Vintage Radio volunteer Marj says: 'Last year I was at a particularly low edge because in 2007 I lost my husband and I'd nursed him in and out of hospital and at home for over 26 years. So when that happened my world just fell apart because that had been my life. I really hadn't had time to do or be anything else other than look after my husband because he was very ill... Vintage Radio helped me find my feet a bit really because you meet so many lovely people... It's been fabulous... And to be honest I'm quite happy sitting behind the mic, I'll gab about anything!'

As part of their future broadcasts, the team plan to have programmes involving such organisations as the Citizens Advice Bureau and local Primary Care Trust, which will cover legal, financial and general welfare issues, as well as health promotion and health problems for more mature people.

Vintage Radio even hosted a very successful and empowering conference at Birkenhead Town Hall of like-minded organisations, community radio stations with considerable experience already, groups who wanted to put a toe in the water for the first time, nationally acknowledged experts on running community radio stations across the board, and bodies - for instance, local authorities and voluntary organisations - who see community radio as a key medium in getting important non-political messages out to the community at large. They even had the General Manager of BBC Radio Merseyside, an enthusiastic supporter, as a guest speaker.

One of the conclusions of the conference was that Vintage Radio is, to date, unique: a radio station run exclusively by over-50s, providing programme content targeted to their interests in terms of current affairs, social issues, drama, literature, poetry and, not least, music. That said, the team have high hopes of establishing a linked-up national network, which could eventually act as a powerful lobbying tool on behalf of older people, and in rolling the Vintage Radio model out to other towns and cities across the country.

To find out more, check out the Vintage Radio website