In November 2023 The RCC’s Ann and Mike travelled to Croatia to represent The Rural Coffee Caravan at the European Social Services Awards (ESSA).
ESSA celebrates innovation and excellence in social services and the Awards “shine a spotlight on successful new approaches and the extraordinary ongoing work of public social services managers, funders, planners, providers, and deliverers of social services, as well as providing opportunities for exchange and mutual learning to improve social work policies and practice.”
Shortlist Delight
The event took place over two days and The Rural Coffee Caravan was delighted enough to have simply been shortlisted for an award, being the only UK organisation reaching this stage in our category of ‘Service Delivery.’ This category “honours innovative social services’ programmes, measures or processes that take a person-centred approach to planning, designing and providing better quality services meeting the needs of people who require care and support.”
Meeting the Neighbours
The Awards ceremony took place on 17th November 2023 in Zagreb and also included a networking event on the following day. This was an exciting opportunity for Ann & Mike to share and highlight the work of The Rural Coffee Caravan with a network of European Social Services organisations, to be inspired by the good practice and innovative ideas of other organisations across Europe which had also been put forward, and to represent and champion our caring UK county of Suffolk to our European neighbours.
We are so proud to have been chosen as the winner of this special award and we would like to say a heartfelt ‘Thank You’ to everyone who kindly voted for us and to say how much we really appreciate it!
Take a look at the East Anglian Daily Times article about it and our gallery of photos from the event below.
(Image credits: ESSA and Ann Osborn).
