Manchester's Volunteer Thank You Event

Over the last academic year ReachOut Manchester volunteers have clocked more than 4,500 voluntary hours helping us run 19 mentoring programmes, renovate our lovely new office and run trips and excursions to help broaden our young people's horizons. Volunteers are an essential part of the ReachOut family and their dedication to the ReachOut programme means that we're able to keep on changing young people's lives for the better. 

To recognise our volunteers' amazing work we held our annual Manchester Volunteer Thank You Event on Friday 29th April. We had a brilliant turn out on the night with over 60 volunteers, corporate friends and ReachOut supporters coming together to celebrate the year (and check out our new office of course).  

After hearing about some of ReachOut's amazing achievements from our CEO Peter Blackwell, we presented awards to those volunteers and Project Leaders who have gone above and beyond what is required of them in their roles. Each category was highly contested, with it being a very difficult decision to choose the eventual winner. In total, we had 5 categories this year with the following shortlist of mentors and Project Leaders: 

ReachOut Club Mentor of the Year

Emily Clewlow

Alastair Barrie (winner)

Nawal Khalid

Phoebe Connolly

Bremer Kayimbe

Rory Mckeown

Mia Carter

Afsaneh Tayyar

ReachOut Academy Mentor of the Year

Kiernya Grant-Blisset

James Doyle

Pablo Buj Cumbreno (winner)

Ore Agbeja

ReachOut ACE Mentor of the Year

Gabriel Evans Cayley (winner)

Eleanor Weston

ReachOut Project Leader of the Year

Rob Jones

Sam Johnson

Martha Rawlings (winner)

Beth Ryan

Maria Bartolome

Alice Pooley

ReachOut Project of the Year

St Paul's High School Year 7

Our Lady's High School Year 7 (winner)

Our Lady's High School Year 8

St John's Primary School Year 6 (Friday project)

We also presented a very special Outstanding Contribution to ReachOut Award to Sam Johnson. Sam has been involved in ReachOut for over 10 years and received multiple nominations for the Project Leader of the Year. His dedication to his work has been unparalleled and the strong relationships he's been able to form with both mentors and mentees makes all of his projects cohesive and enjoyable. Sam has been a vital part of the ReachOut team in Manchester and he will be greatly missed when he leaves us in May! 

Thank you to everyone who attended the event and made it such a great evening! We're hoping to run lots more social events over the coming year so we hope to see you again soon! 

Jo Tripney
Volunteer Officer