Suzie Micallef: Dedicated Charity eLearning Professional 2012

Nov. 15, 2012 - PRLog -- The winners of the Charity Learning Awards 2012

Winner - Best means of engaging your audience: Addaction

Commendation: Barnardo’s

Winner: Best overall online programme: The Royal National Lifeboat Institution

Commendation: The National Autistic Society

Winner: Getting started, or restarted on your eLearning journey: Blue Cross

Winner: Getting started, or restarted on your eLearning journey (Small Charity Award): The Aldingbourne Trust

Commendation: Addaction

Dedicated eLearning professional: Suzie Micallef, Talent Development Manager, The Children’s Society

Innovation in resourcing: TACT

Embracing technology: Cats Protection

The winners of the Charity Learning Awards 2012 are celebrating their well deserved success, after being presented with their accolades at the Charity Learning Conference, 14 November, London. Judges commented on the exceptionally high standard of submissions this year, with clear markers of success.

The Charity Learning Consortium has grown from a small pilot group in 2001 to a thriving community of well over 100 charities, housing associations and non profits. Collaboration has always been at its heart.

It’s been particularly rewarding for the Consortium to see how its workshops, case study presentations and networking at members meetings has proved invaluable, with several members specifically mentioning the direct benefits of this collaboration in their Award submissions this year.

Several charities also mentioned how participation in Towards Maturity benchmarking has helped them progress on their eLearning journeys.

Martin Baker, founder and CEO of The Charity Learning Consortium, commented: “Huge congratulations to all our very worthy winners - although in my mind all of our members are stars, showing huge commitment and dedication to the continuing professional development of staff and volunteers within their organisations.

“It’s been particularly rewarding to see evidence of how our members meetings and initiatives have been inspirational. We will continue to strive to find innovative ways to support excellence in technology-led learning.”


The following special awards were conferred by the Charity Learning Consortium:

Dedicated eLearning professional: Suzie Micallef, Talent Development Manager, The Children’s Society (http://www.childrenssociety.org.uk/)

This is a new Award created this year.  

Congratulating Suzie Micallef, Martin Baker, founder and CEO of The Charity Learning Consortium, commented: “Suzie shows absolute dedication to learning technology, with real commitment to improving learning and development within the Children’s Society. She really embraces the ethos of the Consortium, taking on board our recommendations and suggestions, and is always open to new ideas and concepts which she can apply to maximum benefit, but for little or no cost to the charity. Well done Suzie!”

The Children’s Society aims to create a society where children and young people are valued, respected and happy. It’s committed to helping vulnerable and disadvantaged young people, including children in care and young runaways. For more information please visit www.childrenssociety.org.uk/

Innovation in Resourcing: TACT

This award goes to TACT, the UK’s largest fostering and adoption charity, for its innovative and ‘out of the box’ thinking towards staff resourcing.  

The charity identified the need for an L&D Admin Assistant - but had limited budget. It made the decision to hire someone through an Apprenticeship Scheme, and was lucky enough to find someone with skills in computing technology, and a keen interest in eLearning authoring - which is proving invaluable in the development of its own eLearning courses.

Martin Baker, founder and CEO of The Charity Learning Consortium commented: “This is a great illustration of how our charities are constantly innovating.  Instead of saying ‘can’t do’, TACT worked out ‘how to’!  It’s a great example of what can be achieved by creative thinking, even on a charity budget.”

TACT is the UK’s largest charity and voluntary agency providing fostering and adoption services. Its core work involves providing high quality and well supported fostering or adoptive families for children and young people in the care of local authorities. For more information go to: www.tactcare.org.uk/

Embracing technology: Cats Protection

Cats Protection has a very dedicated IT team, which did most of the work setting up a single sign-on procedure for its eLearning Moodle platform. This was integrated into a bigger plan inside of the organisation, called Cat Flap!

Ian Ross, Learning Technologies Manager at The Charity Learning Consortium commented: “It’s not often that we see such cooperation between L&D and internal IT, or such a smooth journey from start to finish.”

Cats Protection has also been very self-sufficient in setting up its own courses, the menu system and lots of other Moodle features. Getting buy in from several stakeholders within the organisation in the early stages was key to getting the whole project up and running so effectively. It’s a shining example of what can be achieved when everyone is dedicated to working in harmony towards a successful outcome.

“Key staff recognised that for the project to run smoothly they needed to get the right buy-in at the right time,” said Ian. “The IT team were always incredibly helpful. Congratulations on a well deserved Award.”

Cats Protection is the UK’s leading feline welfare charity and helps over 235,000 unwanted cats and kittens each year through a national network of 260 volunteer-run branches and 30 adoption centres. For more information go to www.cats.org.uk/

About The Charity Learning Consortium
The Charity Learning Consortium (CLC) is unique! We enable cost effective eLearning within more than 100 third sector organisations, making online learning available to more than 150,000 volunteers and staff. We’re the largest group of charities, housing associations and not for profits working in the third sector in the UK, collaborating to make eLearning affordable – and effective.

Organisations join us to save money, but also benefit from networking with others with similar aims, – at our regular members meetings and annual Conference & Awards – learning from each other and sharing resources, ideas and best practice. Members also enjoy special discounts and specialist workshops designed to help them make the most of eLearning. Collaboration is at the heart of what we do.