Only four days to go until nominations open for the 2020 Soldiering On Awards! As 2019 Award Winner Gary Tucker confirms, if you are thinking of nominating someone for an award, we would strongly recommend you do, what have you got to lose?”

With 12 Award categories, you’re bound to know at least one person that deserves recognition.

Today let’s catch up with our Education Training & Development Award Winner and our Business of the Year – Start Up Award Winner.

Our 2019 Winner of the Education Training & Development Award was Walking With The Wounded.

 Why Walking With The Wounded deserved recognition…

Walking With The Wounded is changing the lives of former personnel, who are unemployed or at risk of losing the jobs, through its work with the Essex Veterans Mental Health Team. Using a bespoke, Individual Placement and Support approach they have become the first veteran service in the UK to be named an IPS Centre of Excellence for Veterans by the Centre for Mental Health.

And since winning…

Fergus Williams, Director of Operations for Walking with the Wounded, has said, “We are thrilled to be a winner of the 2019 Soldiering On awards. Being recognised by these awards gives us a further platform to highlight our services, which allows us to support more ex-servicemen and women.”

This award was generously sponsored by Capita. Erika Bannerman, Executive Officer, People Solutions at Capita said: “As learning and development experts, working in partnership with the military, Capita is proud to support the Education, Training and Development Award.  In recognition of this partnership, it gave me great pleasure to jointly present the award with Lieutenant General Tyrone Urch. We were both hugely impressed with the nominations and want to extend a special congratulations to Walking With The Wounded for their well-deserved win.”

You can see more about this Award here.

The Winner of our Business of the Year – Start Up Award was Network Training Partnership (NTP).

 Why NTP deserved recognition…

Network Training Partnership provides integrated training and recruitment solutions to the automotive, logistics and recovery industries.. with an additional focus on supporting the veteran community. All instructors are ex-military and Network Training Partnership provides free training and access to jobs.

And since winning…

Gary Tucker, MD of Network Training Partnership has told us how delighted he was that the team won the Business Start-Up of the Year at the Soldiering On Awards.  “It was a fantastic achievement just to make the nominees, and it was extremely humbling to meet such inspirational people across the categories at the House of Lords during the award nominee announcement and the subsequent awards evening.

“The ongoing business support that we have received through the new X-Forces Enterprise 3:6:12 programme has been fantastic, including a year’s free membership of the Federation of Small Businesses and numerous PR opportunities that have significantly raised our profile.

“The Soldiering On Awards is much more than just an awards ceremony, it is a community that helps individuals and businesses in a variety of ways, and we have seen first-hand the hard work and dedication the team put in to achieve this.

“NTP is looking forward to continuing our journey with the help of X-Forces Enterprise, and like everyone that is involved, we are also keen to give something back.  If you are thinking of nominating someone for an award, we would strongly recommend you do, what have you got to lose?”

This award was generously sponsored by Sage.  Kevin Doyle, Foundation Channel Manager at Sage said: “Through on-going initiatives, Sage is helping to create a new generation of veteran-owned businesses who have the potential to inspire the entrepreneurs of the future.”

You can see more about this Award here.

It will be fantastic if you can help to spread the word by sharing this blog to make sure as many people as possible have the opportunity to nominate whoever they feel deserves an Award!  These tags may help you: #SOA2019 #SOA2020 #soldieringonawards #supportthewalk @UrchTyrone @centreformh #SageServingHeroes #StartUp @TheLordYoung