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Celebrating Talent & Diversity in Apprenticeships!

A SPECTACULAR evening of high emotion and standing ovations were at the heart of this year’s Multicultural Apprenticeship Awards in partnership with Pearson.

Hosted at The Eastside Rooms in Birmingham, the awards saw 650 attendees celebrate the success of over 150 finalist apprentices, employers, and learning providers.

Now in its seventh year, the event is organised by ThinkFest and is an initiative of Pathway Group; a national skills and employability provider, with the aim of celebrating talent and diversity in the apprenticeship sector.

To begin the evening, Chairman of Pathway Group Alan Hill announced a surprise award for Dr Anna Morrison CBE from Amazing Apprenticeships for her Overall Contribution to Apprenticeships.

Over the past decade, Amazing Apprenticeships have worked with approximately 4,500 schools across the nation to tackle misconceptions about apprenticeships and promote the benefits, supporting hundreds of thousands of students and their families to make informed decisions in the process.

After receiving her award, Anna said that Government support for apprenticeships has not always been there, but she is more optimistic now for the future and wants to see the effort put ‘on steroids.’

Throughout the course of the evening over 20 apprentices and employers were awarded across the range of industry-specific categories for their excellence in the sector.

Intermediate Apprentice of the Year Areeba Kainat from Skills and Education Group received an emotional standing ovation from a teary audience after hearing how she had overcome numerous heart-wrenching challenges, including the murder of her father and being a victim of domestic violence, leading her to be placed into foster care.

Areeba said she wanted to make her late father proud, and this had been the driving force for all her hard work, having achieved a distinction in her apprenticeship.

Another story of triumph over adversity that earned a standing ovation was that of keynote speaker Haider Ali, himself a former winning apprentice back in 2020.

Speaking without notes, Haider described how his determination to succeed had to lead him to become one of the UK’s youngest Chartered Management Accountants, despite being educated in a secondary school with a GCSE maths pass rate of only 15 per cent.

The event culminated with Software Engineering Degree Apprentice Parris Small from Jaguar Land Rover being crowned overall Apprentice of the Year 2022.

Hundreds of guests stood and clapped as she received her award from Anne Ashworth, Head of Apprenticeships at Pearson and Safaraz Ali, Chief Executive of Pathway and the Founder of the awards and The Multicultural Apprenticeship Alliance.

Parris said that all the shortlisted apprentices were winners and pledged herself to doing all that she can to raise the profile of apprenticeships and make as many as possible aware of the opportunities that she has enjoyed.

Following the awards, Event Director Kasim Choudhry said, “We are overwhelmed with the love and support we have had from individuals and organisations from across the sector. Seeing all the positive comments on social media about how the event has impacted people makes everything we do worthwhile.”

Some of the biggest names in UK business were amongst the sponsors of the awards, including Lloyds Banking Group, Virgin Media O2, BT Group, and Severn Trent.

“We are very appreciative of the support from all of our sponsors, having these great names behind us sends a powerful message about the importance of apprenticeships and diversity.”, said Safaraz Ali.

#MCAppAwards

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