NEON awards success for Student Recruitment and Widening Participation team

29 May 2014

On Tuesday 13 May, colleagues from the Student Recruitment and Widening Participation team in SRID (Student Recruitment and International Development) were delighted to attend the inaugural NEON award’s ceremony at the Palace of Westminster, after being shortlisted in three categories

NEON is a national organisation supporting practitioners involved in widening access to higher education and aims to enable those working to widen access to HE to affect change in their own organisations and communities. 

Colleagues from SRID won two awards and a further colleague was highly commended. This is fantastic recognition for the work being undertaken in SRID and across the University to support widening participation. Congratulations to all colleagues who were recognised for their fantastic work. 

The awards were:

• NEON Widening Access Initiative Award: Manchester Gateways programme (Emma Britain and Amy Barnett), category winner. This category was voted for by the NEON community, and aimed to highlight an initiative that leads the way in widening access practice. 
• NEON Outstanding Contribution to Widening Access Award: Sam Kalubowila, category winner. This award recognises the work of an individual in the access community who has shown real commitment to this area of work. Union. 
• NEON Student/Graduate of the Year: Niketa Sanderson-Gillard, highly commended. This award looked to identify students or recent graduates who had made an innovative and distinctive impact to widening access to HE. 

The presentations were made by Liam Byrne (Shadow Minister for Higher Education) who is also an alumnus of The University of Manchester – he was very happy to be making so many presentations to Manchester staff and it is great for him to be aware of the work the University is doing to widen participation.