Essex Digital Awards 2016

The biggest Essex awards ceremony of the year has drawn to a close, but for all of our winners, it's all uphill from here!

On April 14 (2016), Essex Digital Awards hosted their biggest awards night, rewarding innovation and progression in digital thinking by businesses, individuals, events, charities or educational establishments. We are proud to have been the sponsors this year of two of the awards, the Future of Essex award and the Digital Skills for Growth award,

The Future of Essex award is in recognition of achievement through our successful Education and Industry STEM Programme, which looks to support secondary schools across Essex to establish and then develop greater links with industry in key sectors such as the digital, engineering and creative sectors in order to enhance students’ access to careers education. The Board’s work with students approaching the end of their time in school sees the focus shift to enabling them to progress into jobs or further learning related to the particular area of interest.

Silver award winners Robbie Kinghorn (Stanway School), Sarthak Das and Ben Bave (Westcliff High School for Boys) have demonstrated excellence through our programme and have already made impressive achievements at an early age. Our gold winner, Isreal Genius (Chase High School), was nominated for his ‘considerable on-going contribution in Essex to the furthering of Computing education’. Isreal has used his enthusiasm and skills to encourage others across Essex to engage with technology, and help build their confidence in using it.

 

The Digital Skills for Growth award was developed in order bring attention to the businesses who have made the most of the funding and invested time, as well as money, into their employees, enabled by our Digital Skills for Growth funding programme. In summer 2014, we agreed to allocate a large portion of funding to help address the shortfall in digital skills in the Essex workforce. As a result, the Digital Skills for Growth programme was launched and it allowed Essex businesses to receive up to £4,000 for each new employee they hire that was going into a digital role.

Atlas Computers Systems, were awarded the gold prize who, as a result of the funding, have developed award winning software. We were also proud to acknowledge CAD Bureau Southern and Project Skills Solutions.

We are proud to have sponsored such an incredible night; on behalf of everyone at the Board, we thank the Essex Digital Awards for hosting a wonderful evening, and all the staff that helped make the night a success.