Sarah Gardner – Unsung Hero Awards

Nomination

Award Category:

Volunteer of the year

Individual or Team Nomination?

Individual

Qualifying Qualities

In these challenging times, nominators were asked to show how the nominee had demonstrated the following qualities:

Exceptional work ethic - going above and beyond their job description, especially in the past 12 months.
Outstanding achievement/s in work or outside of the organisation where relevant.
Drive for innovation and proactive leadership in these challenging times.
High level of interpersonal skills, such as kindness, empathy, loyalty and thoughtfulness to staff and patients.
A resilience considering Covid to their role and to the health and wellbeing of their colleagues.

Nominators Answer

Nominee's story :

Sarah has been volunteering at the NHS confederation as a vaccine marshal during the pandemic, she is also volunteering with St John’s ambulance as a COVID-19 vaccinator, she has set up the charity Serving Our Superheroes, which she established at the start of the pandemic. She set up the charity to provide frontline NHS staff with support during COVID, she started supplying laundry bags and then patient washbags (filled with toiletries) and NHS treat packs to hospitals in Hillingdon, West London/Ealing, and Buckinghamshire. Sarah set up Serving our Superheroes, a project, at the start of the pandemic supporting frontline care workers. The project evolved, to support the homeless and since then is has evolved to support parents who are struggling financially by providing baby items and school uniforms. Serving Our Superheroes has brought the community together to support those in need. Serving Our Superheroes has won various awards and Sarah has been thanked by the Lord Lieutenant for Greater London. Serving Our Superheroes, has donated over 42,649 items (worth over £700,000) and this figure continues to grow daily. During the COVID-19 pandemic Sarah has also been volunteering for Hillingdon for All as a COVID-19 Care Caller and a community champion. Community champions are working on behalf of NHS colleagues to get important health and vaccine messages out into the community. Sarah has also established a group called Helping West London, where various charity contacts and community leads can share resources and information to help get items to those in need. During the pandemic Sarah also set up a 2nd charity, a mental health charity called Well-being for All. Sarah is also a dementia champion and has been running dementia sessions before the pandemic and has been running them online, during the pandemic. Sarah has been volunteering for over 16 years, as a cadet instructor, inspiring young people to achieve, also as a school governor. She has various voluntary roles focused on helping to end poverty, including being a trustee of Hounslow Community Food Box (a food bank) and Vice Chair of Thamesbank Credit Union. She is also part of an international charity, supporting people in Uganda and has been sending material and patterns for her colleagues in Uganda to make masks. Since the pandemic Sarah has been busy with her existing voluntary roles, for instance the need for the food bank grew and she helped facilitate a move to new larger premises and to design new policies and procedures in light of covid, when they also had to move to a delivery only service. At the credit union they set up specialist low-rate key worker loans. She is the president elect of her local rotary club, and established various projects including a dementia project, also co-founding a project to enable the supply of vaccines, in developing countries. She also volunteers for Future First, inspiring young people. Sarah does all this whilst working in her day job and looking after her 2 young children.