Acuwomen Director, Angela Maxwell, who is one of the West Midlands’ most successful entrepreneurs, won another accolade recently when scooped the title of Business Language Champions Ambassador for 2009.
The Award, presented at a national ceremony at London’s Imagination Gallery, recognised Angela’s dedication to the Business Language Champions programme which partners schools with businesses to highlights the links between learning foreign languages and being successful in business.
Since the programme, run by the Regional Language Network, was launched in the West Midlands over 4 years ago, Angela has worked with five schools and spoken at many conferences in the region to inspire and encourage young people to continue with their language learning. Three of these schools have increased languages uptake with Angela’s help and continue to welcome Angela back each year to talk with new groups of students.
Angela was delighted to win the award, she said: “I am passionate about inspiring young people to succeed and the Business Language Champions Programme provides a perfect opportunity to encourage students to think about languages and their future in a real-world context.”
Frances Pallett, Business Language Champions Project Manager at the Regional Language Network added: “Angela is such an inspiration to all the students she comes into contact with and I am thrilled she has won this award. Angela has given up so much of her time to encourage young people to broaden their horizons that she really deserves the honour of being a language ambassador. I hope that her successes will encourage others to become Business Language Champions.”
Business Language Champions is supported by the Department for Children, School and Families (DCSF) and aims to encourage youngsters to appreciate that learning languages will benefit them and open up the door to many exciting career opportunities. BLC partners schools with local businesses and engages them in activities such as language quizzes, enterprise days and competitions to persuade students that learning languages will benefit their careers.
The Regional Language Network West Midlands helps businesses and individuals to overcome language and cultural barriers and provides a ‘first-point-of-contact’ for all language and culture-related queries in the region. For more information please visit the RLN website rln-westmidlands
