
2021 award winners
Meet our 2021 winners
The Inspire! awards celebrate the achievements of exceptional individuals, families, community projects and organisations who have shown outstanding passion, commitment and drive to improve themselves, their community or workplace through learning.
Lifelong learning changes lives. Inspire us and share your story.
We are looking for individuals, community projects, and organisations whose learning achievements have improved their lives and the lives of others and gained a positive or life changing experience from adult learning.
The awards are co-ordinated by Learning and Work Institute in partnership with Welsh Government and other supporters, including The Open University in Wales, Agored Cymru, Qualifications Wales, National Centre for Learning Welsh and Adult Learning Wales.
We want to work with you to promote a culture of lifelong learning across Wales – the Inspire! Award winners will demonstrate the transformational power of adult learning. They are the showcase for people, projects, and communities demonstrating how lifelong learning is making a difference to life chances.
We need your help to promote the Inspire! Awards
Can you encourage nominations and share information with your networks, colleagues, and friends?
When Fatma Al Nahdy made the journey to the UK from Yemen in 2015, she didn’t speak any English and due to the ongoing wars and turbulent situation in Yemen she had never attended school. Fatma could speak two languages fluently but didn’t know how to read or write.
Her son was born not long after she arrived, and she was determined to build a better life for him. So, when she was offered the chance to enroll on an English as a Second Language (ESOL) course at Coleg Cambria, she was nervous but excited to take on a new challenge. Just five years later, Fatma has completed ESOL as well as a Level 2 Diploma in Skills for Further Study and a Level 3 Access to Higher Education course. She passed her GCSE maths and English and has continued to broaden her knowledge by enrolling on ECDL, beginner’s Welsh and interpretation courses. Fatma’s goal has always been to become a nurse. She was recently accepted onto a nursing degree at Bangor University
For Fatma, learning English was an essential part of getting settled and starting her new life in Wales.
As well as the challenge of learning new things, Fatma is motivated by her desire for her son to have a better life. “Now I can speak, read, and write and understand English very well. I can read letters independently, go to the GP without a translator and support my son with his schoolwork.”