Matthew wins Student Volunteer of the Year Award
Matthew LeDoux-Deakin has won Student Volunteer of the Year Award at the University of Derby Employability Awards, after being introduced to the charity he volunteers for through our Development Worker, Alison.
Matthew has given up his time to volunteer for the British Acoustic Neuroma Association (BANA), a national charity based in Chesterfield, which aims to improve understanding and quality of life for people diagnosed with the rare brain tumour, Acoustic Neuromas, and their support networks.
The charity was looking for someone to help update its human resources policies and Matthew, business and HR management student at the University of Derby, stepped in to help.
Whilst coping with serious health issues of his own, Matthew started to update, simplify and amalgamate the charity’s policies making them easy to navigate and fully compliant.
Then, in January of this year Matthew was hospitalised and is recovering with limited use of his fingers. Understanding the impact his work would have on the charity, Matthew sought the support of Dragon Simply Speaking to help with typing and fulfil his volunteering pledge to the charity.
The University of Derby’s Employability Awards celebrate students, staff and external partners who have made highly significant contributions towards student employability during the academic year 2020-21.
Matthew said: “Winning the Student Volunteer of Year award for my work with BANA and Derbyshire Voluntary Action (DVA) is very humbling and is not just an award for me, but for every volunteer in Derbyshire. It is my privilege to work with both BANA and the DVA and I hope the HR Policy tool created for BANA will benefit many more charities and voluntary organisations.”
Alison Gibson, Development Worker at Community Chesterfield, said: “We connect students from the University with Health and Social Care charities across Chesterfield. We’ve discovered that some small charities can be strengthened for the future with business support such as HR or finance.
“Matthew’s commitment and knowledge is remarkable, he’s created an easy to use, up to date HR document which is in line with Charity Commission Guidelines and will be available for free to all other charities operating in a similar way to BANA – this is just brilliant!”
Julie Dixon, CEO of BANA, said: “The impact Matthew has had on our charity and potentially other charities of similar size is more incredible than people would imagine. We care about our employees and volunteers, having suitable HR policies in place is important. We get so busy it can be hard to pause and find the right support for this kind of thing never mind the funds to pay for it. We greatly appreciate the result and also Matthew’s offer to be our volunteer HR consultant going forward.”