Charities scoop Training Journal awards

What a way to end a year, as two top prizes in the Training Journal awards are won by charities.

Cats Protection has won a bronze Training Journal award in the Public Sector/Not for Profit category for its Volunteer Champions Programme. The charity involves over 11,500 volunteers who help approximately 200,000 cats every year, so supporting them is a priority. This popular face-to-face course has been running for several years and includes four full-day modules. Over 600 volunteer managers have completed the programme.

Through evaluation, and from seeing the impact within the charity, the course is achieving its aims. Cats Protection has now developed an online version of the programme, which was also shortlisted in the TJ Awards, in the Best Use of Technology in Learning category. The charity can now reach more volunteers, helping them to improve the welfare of its people and cats.

Sue Field, Director of People & Engagement at Cats Protection, said: “The Volunteer Champions Programme has had such an impact on our people and the cats they help. This award recognises a fantastic cross-team achievement within Cats Protection.”

Little Man Project – a long standing partner of the Charity Learning Consortium – also won the gold Training Journal award in the Public Sector/Not for Profit category, alongside the National Autistic Society.

Aware of a growing concern for the under and misdiagnosis of women and girls on the autism spectrum, the National Autistic Society commissioned Little Man Project to develop an eLearning module to support clinicians. The charity used their specialist knowledge of autism and funding from the Pears Foundation, while Little Man Project brought their instructional design skills to the project. The right partnership between charities and commercial suppliers can have a huge positive impact and affect real change. The ground-breaking module was used by almost 15,000 people within the first year of its launch.

Gill Chester, founder and director at Little Man Project said she was over the moon with the success of both these charities: “It was such a pleasure to see their hard work recognised in this way.”

She added that the National Autistic Society project has been “one of the highlights of my career, to work on something so important that has had such a positive effect on people’s lives.”

You can find out more about the women and girls on the autism spectrum project in this short video.