The Tutor Trust is pleased to announce that it is now a multi-award winning charity!  Yesterday afternoon our Co-Founders, Abigail Shapiro and Nick Bent, and our Leeds Coordinators, Funmi Stewart and Maria Robson, attended the Spirit of the Community Awards at Yorkshire Bank in Leeds City Centre.

In the fifth year of the awards, they were presented by Debbie Crosbie, Clydesdale and Yorkshire Banks’ Chief Operating Officer and Chair of the Yorkshire and Clydesdale Bank Foundation.  The awards aim to give recognition to the contribution that charities and voluntary projects make to local communities.

The Tutor Trust were honoured to attend to collect their ‘Spirit of Community’ Award – one of the 15 winning entries out of 300 applicants!  But we were even more delighted to find out that we had also been awarded the ‘Special Recognition’ Award, given to only one project out of the 15 winners.  This prize is for the ‘best of the best’, and is kept secret until the awards ceremony.  It was a fantastic surprise for everyone in the team to receive this award.

   

The whole team is extremely proud of the new accolade, and delighted with our new trophy – and of course, the £10,000 prize cheque!  We want to thank Edward Ziff OBE, SHINE, Teach First, the University of Leeds, The Rayne Foundation and the Stone Foundation for supporting our work in Leeds.  We’d also like to thank PwC and Leeds City Council, specifically Tom Riordan.  It is brilliant for our team to see the support that is going into our work there, and we are all extremely proud – long may it continue!

These two awards for our Leeds work follow on from two other major successes for Tutor Trust.  In late 2016, we won the national prize for ‘best new charity in Britain’ at the annual Charity Times Awards in London and a ‘Spirit of Manchester Award’ from MACC. 

Nick and Abigail commented:

“Having expanded into Leeds only two years ago, it is great to see our work truly thriving.  We are so grateful to our Leeds team, who keep everything moving smoothly there, and we take this as a great affirmation of our work – it only bolsters our efforts to try and spread the charity even further.  All of us here at the Tutor Trust want to say a massive thank you to Yorkshire Bank for this generous funding.  We are thrilled that the significant impact of our project has been recognised.  The funding will allow us to provide a high-level of education to those students who will benefit most from it.  Ensuring that students have good GCSE’s will be essential for their future education, growth and employment.”