On Wednesday 19th November, the Macquarie Group announced that our CEO Anita Grover has won the 2014 Macquarie David Clarke Social Innovation Fellowship.  She becomes the first UK recipient of the Award, which provides a grant to research social innovation abroad. Thanks to the Fellowship, Anita will be able to visit Australia and New Zealand in August 2015 to learn from organisations such as Hear and Say and theShepherd Centre, who have led the way in providing innovative auditory verbal therapy programmes, training and operations for more than 20 years. The learnings from this visit and future collaboration with our sister organisations, will help us to reach and support many more families of deaf children in the UK.

The Fellowship was launched in 2012 for Australian charities, with 2014 being the first year the biennial Fellowship was open to CEOs of UK based not-for-profit organisations. The panel of judges, who selected Anita, included Rt Hon Fiona Woolf, former Lord Mayor of the City of London, and three Macquarie Group Executive Directors.

Anita says,”I’m absolutely delighted and very honoured to be the first recipient of the UK Macquarie David Clark Social Innovation Fellowship. It is such a fantastic opportunity to visit and research best practice in Australia and New Zealand and learn from those who have the experience of mainstreaming the AV approach and developing innovative practice and programmes that have supported families and professionals for many years. With the help of the Macquarie David Clarke Fellowship, I am more confident than ever that AV^UK can bring auditory verbal therapy to greater numbers of children in the UK and help them to listen, speak and achieve their full potential.”

Photo of Anita with David Fass, CEO of Macquarie Group,  EMEA