2023 Volunteer of the year Award

Huge congratulations to this year’s winners – Sam Carnley and Victoria Pringle.

The decision to present the honour to both was in part due to their constant collaboration on supporting our mentorship programme, but also because of the close working relationship between these two amazing volunteers. We just couldn’t choose between them!

And while both winners have been part of our incredibly hard-working mentoring team for a significant time and both have been recognised as Volunteer of the Month on previous occasions, this year the judges decided that the pair really stepped up their support.

This work has included Sam taking the lead on the implementation of a new mentoring platform. It’s a system that we are looking to launch at the end of 2023/early 2024 which will see the mentorship programme automated. However, while there are multiple platforms available, Sam and the team were keen to make sure that nothing would be ‘lost’ versus our existing six-monthly programme. There was also a keen desire to see additional resources made available to mentors and mentees and an opportunity to ensure that the all-important matching process continues to be as effective as it can be.

Meanwhile, Victoria has shouldered the burden of the manual matching. This process often involves work beyond the handling of the information included on our submission forms so that the team can achieve the best match possible. And while this process is always time consuming, the uptick in the number of mentor-mentee relationships at WIBF (now around 300 at any one time!) means that this process has become even more labour intensive. This support is on top of the already considerable work Victoria does to support the Scottish branches for WIBF.

Please join us in congratulating both Sam and Victoria on their well-earned accolade of our 2023 Volunteers of the Year!