You won't see their faces on a billboard. Most of them would rather you didn't.

But ask anyone in Maryhill, Knightswood, Govan, Pollok or Paisley who keeps the lights on in their corner of the city, and one of these five names will come up.

Glasgow Live's Rachel Cronin rounded up five "unsung heroes" at the close of 2025, and the more you read about them, the harder it is to call them unsung. They're the spine of the city.

The 11-year-old who raised £5,000 for Beatson

Charlie Nugent, from Maryhill, lost his grandad Eddie to cancer in 2023. By the time he turned eleven he had raised £5,000 for Beatson Cancer Charity in his grandad's name — tackling a zip line over the Clyde and pounding round the city in the Santa Dash to do it.

His mum Mandy Toland told Glasgow Live the People Make Maryhill Unsung Hero Award "made Charlie feel dead special to be recognised for all the hard work he's done. I'm just really proud."

The Para still raising thousands for his own

Terence "Terry" McCourt, 67, served twelve years with 2 Para before swapping a Parachute Regiment beret for a janitor's keys at Glasgow School of Art. In the fifteen years since, the Knightswood grandad has quietly raised more than £120,000 for SSAFA, the Armed Forces charity.

Five times a year he and his old Para mates set up a collection at Glasgow Central, often pulling in £1,500 in a single shift. Princess Anne has since presented him with his MBE at the Palace of Holyroodhouse, with his three grandsons — Callum, Lewis and six-year-old Jordan — looking on in McCourt family kilts.

The woman fighting to save Govan's 130-year-old club

Fairfield Club has stood in Govan since the 1890s. Barbara Wark's father and grandfather drank there on Friday paydays. Now, as committee secretary, she is leading a £60,000 fundraiser to rewire the building before its ageing electrics force the doors shut for good.

"If we don't get the money, we are at real danger of us closing. We're sitting on the edge," she told Glasgow Live. "Over the course of a week I would say that three or four hundred people use this club. My fear is, where are they going to go?"

The appeal has so far raised more than £6,000.

The foodbank manager who wants to put herself out of a job

Claire McCunnie has run Glasgow South West Foodbank since it opened in 2013 — twelve years of making sure families and pensioners don't have to choose between heating and eating.

Her ambition is one most charity bosses won't say aloud. "I remember when I took the job, my one goal, and it's still my one goal, is to be able to shut the door," she told Glasgow Live.

The foodbank's festive appeal has cleared £5,000, with donations still being welcomed into the new year.

The youth worker on her 23rd Christmas in a row

Helen Sloan joined Kibble School in Paisley as a Child and Youth Care Worker in 2002. She has worked every single Christmas Day since. Her colleagues call her Mrs Claus.

She teaches care-experienced young people the unglamorous essentials — cooking, budgeting, keeping a home — but it's the listening the kids prize most.

"It is a privilege to be part of a young person's day," she said. "Never in 23 years has Kibble felt like work."

Five names. One city.

What ties Charlie, Terry, Barbara, Claire and Helen together isn't a headline or a hashtag. It's the simple, stubborn habit of turning up — for a grandad's memory, for old comrades, for a club, a foodbank, a kid who needs a roof and a hot meal.

Glasgow doesn't run on its skyline. It runs on people like this.

With reporting from Glasgow Live and the Clydebank Post.