As some of you are already aware, we attended the Royal Greenwich Business Awards at the Intercontinental Hotel at the O2 on Friday 15th February.
Deaf Umbrella was nominated for the Online Business Awards, in recognition of a well-designed, easy to navigate website, with good integration to social media which offers a great online customer experience.
We are delighted to report that we won our category! To receive this accolade in the face of stiff competition is amazing and we are over the moon.
The Awards were extremely well attended, with businesses both micro and multi-national being represented. We thought our happiness was complete and our success at the event was indeed gratifying…, but we are delighted to report there was another achievement to follow. At the end of the Awards Ceremony, the winner of the Business of the Year 2019 was announced.
The judges, in a secret ballot, decided which out of ALL the category winners they considered the “cream of the crop” – the BEST business in the Royal Borough of Greenwich for 2019. We are completely bowled over and walking on air … they chose US!
There was a wide range of businesses represented at the awards – from micro to multi-nationals – and little ol’ us scooped the overall prize, along with the £2,000 grant that goes with it!
This level of success is not down to just one person – we work as a team and our efforts are holistic. However, we must pay tribute to Rachel – she is not good at “blowing her own trumpet”, so we must do it for her!
Rachel has driven Deaf Umbrella to success after success over the last 20 years. This road has not always been an easy one, and it could be said we have taken 20 years to become and overnight success! It is a testament to her leadership that even when the going has been rocky (and every business experiences ups and downs), the Company has remained true to its ideals, core principles and vision of supporting the Deaf and Hard of Hearing to the their own personal successes and achievements in a professional and competent manner (play the video below:)
THE MONEY WILL BE PUT TO GOOD USE
Deafness is a hidden disability and many pass through life completely ignorant of the difficulties that the d/Deaf and hard of hearing face.
As a company, Deaf Umbrella has campaigned for 20 years to raise awareness and promote a culture of tolerance, empowerment through knowledge, opportunity and the pathway to success and independence for our service users.
We encourage independence and a sense of self-worth and value and actively “put our money where our mouth is” by operating a CIC Company which provides a dedicated employment service for the D/deaf and hard of hearing people, run by a Deaf employment advisor along with Communication Support Workers (CSW)
We used to work with the DWP, and received funding for our Work Preparation programme accordingly. Unfortunately, budget cuts prevailed and the money stopped. However, we knew the value of our programme, so Deaf Umbrella solely funds this project as we had achieved excellent results by assisting many of our service users into permanent employment. Some people take on fixed term contracts, or temporary work and others felt voluntary work was the best “fit” for them.
The point is they succeeded! So, we continue our programme alone and without outside funding – that is until now of course… our prize money will be invested into this programme!
We are extremely proud to be the business we are and to work with exceptional staff, service users and customers to make last Friday’s wonderful achievements possible.
❤️
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