The winners of the Charity Learning Awards 2016 were announced on 17th November 2016, rewarding third sector organisations who manage to come up with innovative learning & development solutions despite limited budgets and a dispersed, often volunteer-based workforce.
Martin Baker, founder and CEO of the Charity Learning Consortium and GivebackUK, 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."
You can read more about the winners below - for further reading we've also interviewed some of the winners and nominees in our series Learning Challenges in the Third Sector.
Best eLearning programme
Winner: Victim Support
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.
Best eLearning module design
Winner: Kibble Education & Care Centre
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. Addaction were awarded silver in this category.
Organisational buy-in: Raising the L&D profile
Winner: Restless Development
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.
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.
L&D professional of the year
Winner: Lucia Capobianco, Volunteer Training Support Officer at 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
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.
