College of North East London wins Capita’s first Inspire Award

Chris Cooper, director of Capita Further and Higher Education presents a cheque for £10,000 and a commemorative plaque to Paul Head, principal of the College of North East London (CONEL), and Charmaine Brouard, the project leader, as winners of Capita’s first Inspire Award.

The Award was for the college with the best enrichment activity that will benefit both students and the broader community. CONEL’s project is to develop a series of short courses to help bring women into training opportunities in the construction field.

“The essence of the project was to take training out into the community which would make it easier to involve the women who are often difficult to engage with in training terms. Initially the funding would be used to equip mobile training units to visit places such as community centres,” said CONEL’s project co-ordinator, Charmaine Brouard.

Charmaine has already started to promote the courses, which could not have been funded without the award, and already has had an excellent response in recruitment terms.

Chris Cooper, director of Capita Further and Higher Education said: “Capita decided to initiate the Inspire Award in recognition of our long term involvement with the Further Education sector going back over twenty years.”

Chris Cooper also visited Sussex Downs College whose project was the continuation of work started three years ago at Buwangyanga village in the Sironko district of Uganda. Project co-ordinator, Ian Elgie, said that the Inspire Award will make a real contribution to building an important medical and nutrition centre to serve the community of around 300,000 people. He will be taking a further group of students out to Uganda later this year to progress the project.

Chris Cooper, director of Capita Further and Higher Education presents a cheque for £3,000 to Dr John Blake, Principal, Sussex Downs College, and Ian Elgie, the project leader, as runners up of Capita’s first Inspire Award.

Capita will monitor progress of the projects at CONEL and Sussex Downs, as well as some of the other entries, and regular updates will appear on this website.