Charity Learning Award winners 2016
The winners of the Charity Learning Awards 2016 are proof that little or no budget is no barrier to delivering innovative eLearning. Most of the winners had no resources to speak of, but came up with award winning solutions to the business challenges they faced. Their stories of success are an inspiration to all organisations, not just fellow charities.
Martin Baker, founder and CEO of the Charity Learning Consortium, commented: “The winners’ stories are a great example of that old adage ‘necessity is the mother of invention’. Doing ‘more for less’ with the resources available is an everyday reality for third sector organisations but a lack of big budgets can inspire people to create innovative solutions.
“I’m enormously proud not just of this year’s winners, but of all members of the Charity Learning Consortium who work so hard to support the skills needs of their workforce. They’re unsung heroes in my eyes, ensuring that staff and volunteers are able to carry out essential services to the best of their abilities. It’s easy to take their achievements for granted but every day they are quite simply extraordinary.”
The awards were presented at the annual Charity Learning Conference in London on 17th November 2016. Read on to find out more about the winners and their stories.
Best eLearning programme
Winner: Victim Support @VictimSupport
With no budget, the L&D team at Victim Support used ingenuity to create a new data protection and information security eLearning module. With a clear focus on wanting to change behaviour, they showed a smart use of simple technology and supported management as they rolled out the new programme – with wonderful results. A great example of a holistic vs tick box approach to an eLearning compliance course.
Silver: Parkinson’s UK @ParkinsonsUK
Best eLearning module design
Winner: Kibble Education & Care Centre @KibblePaisley
Kibble created an informative virtual tour of the organisation for a new online induction pack. Using great images and a welcoming, localised voice over, this clever use of Storyline resulted in a simple but engaging tour that draws you in. The project meant liaising with all areas of the organisation, but the simplicity of the result is part of its winning formula.
Silver: Addaction @AddactionUK
Organisational buy-in: Raising the L&D profile
Winner: Restless Development @RestlessDev
Rokas Buciunas, People & Performance Coordinator, and his team at Restless Development had no budget for training or travel, but masterminded a successful launch of eLearning in 10 countries simultaneously. Their ingenuity and ‘can-do’ attitude turned the launch into a resounding success, captivating staff and senior leadership. As a result, a special eLearning week is now an annual event, a bespoke Induction course is being developed and eLearning forms part of appraisals and personal development plans.
Silver: Victim Support
Best use of resources
Winner: Victim Support
Again with no budget, Victim Support developed an online awareness course in female genital mutilation. Freely available resources were used to create it in a brilliant example of what can be achieved through dedicated research and curation. This highly sensitive subject was tackled with great professionalism, resulting in an informative, well presented and well received eLearning course.
Silver: Parkinson’s UK
Silver: WDP @WDP_Charity
L&D professional of the year
Winner: Lucia Capobianco, Volunteer Training Support Officer at Samaritans @Samaritans
Lucia does an outstanding job, looking after the skills needs of Samaritans’ 20,000+ volunteers. Technically aware and innovative, she’s great at using the resources that she already has to hand. A good communicator, she’s also adept at building good working relationships and partnerships and has been a joy to collaborate with at the Charity Learning Consortium.
Technology Innovation
Winner: St John Ambulance @stjohnambulance
Andrew New, Head of Training at St John Ambulance, has been fearless in embracing a cutting edge digital solution that will help streamline the management of training volunteers, ensuring they keep refreshing their life saving skills. Called RedPanda, the project has massive potential: St John Ambulance puts 400,000 people through their training programmes every year. Currently still in development, RedPanda will also form a blueprint that other charities may build upon in the future.
Notes for editors
For further information about the winners’ stories or to interview the charities involved please contact Susie Finch sfinch@charitylearning.org 01453 768855 or 07478 500 757
About the Charity Learning Consortium
We enable cost effective, quality eLearning to be offered to more than 500,000 staff and volunteers across the third sector in the UK – engaging staff that other learning & development doesn’t reach.
Our collaborative concept paves the way for eLearning success. As a result, independent research has found that Consortium members save twice as much money on L&D compared to non-members in the sector; are twice as likely to report positive changes in staff behaviour and almost three times more likely to report that using learning technologies has improved their organisation’s productivity.
More than 120 charities, housing associations and not for profits already benefit from collaborating with our unique organisation. Connect with us on twitter @charitylearning We also love to chat, so do please give us a call on 08451 707 702.