|
| |
 |
Samaritans scoop ICT award |
The National eWell-Being Awards has recognised the Samaritans for its innovative email services. The awards programme focuses on projects that use ICT to deliver social, economic and environmental benefits, and recognised 29 short-listed projects from 130 entries. The Samaritans won the ‘Making a Difference’ special award for its work with email; supporting other organisations in the development and setting up of their own services and offering support to people around the world via email.Samaritans email service was first introduced in 1994 and experienced significant development in 2003 with 100 of the organisation’s 203 branches. By 2006, 180 of the branches were able to provide email support services, with 8895 trained volunteers using the system. “We are proud to have won this award in recognition of our use of technology, through our email service, as a way to communicate. We have developed and established our email service as a highly effective way of providing emotional support to people who need Samaritans’ help,” commented Dominic Rudd, Chief Executive with Samaritans. “We’d certainly like to thank The Vodafone UK Foundation too, because they’ve been invaluable partners to us in reaching out, to offer our support to anyone in emotional distress – especially younger people, who make particular use of our email service. “ The eWell-Being Awards are sponsored by AOL, Brother, BT, the Department for Communities and Local Government, and the Improvement and Development Agency (IDeA). |
|
