Maria Podlasiuk
Salford, Greater Manchester

St John Ambulance, the UK’s leading first aid charity.

Maria joined her local St John Ambulance (SJA) as a young girl aged 11 because she wanted to become a doctor and thought that this would look good on her CV. 29 years later, as well as being a science teacher at Manchester Enterprise Academy, Maria is the Principal Youth Officer for the SJA in Greater Manchester.

She currently has responsibility for 800 youth members between the ages of 5 and 18, and a team of over 80 youth leaders. Maria’s principal responsibilities include, liaising with the charity’s national HQ, strategic planning, fundraising, and managing the team of senior volunteers who manage the charity’s youth programme. In addition to motivating her team, Maria believes that providing young people with life saving skills, and training to enhance their personal development are important aspects of her role. She believes that the organisation plays an important role in giving young people a voice, and enables them to try things they wouldn’t normally do in school which will help them to grow, develop and achieve.

The remarkable versatility of Maria’s role is highlighted by one of her SJA colleagues who said: “As well as liaising with national HQ, strategic planning, fundraising, managing the senior volunteers and providing leadership and motivation to all our members, Maria’s duties also include; attending numerous public events as an operational first aider; running several residential training courses; and, writing various training programmes for use by SJA nationally.”

Last year alone, Maria’s voluntary work for SJA clocked up over 1,700 hours, and she’s put in, on average, 1,000 hours for many of her previous 28 years with the organisation.

Commenting on her Versatility in Volunteering Award, Maria said: “It’s unbelievable, but shows that our work is valued and it’s an award for all the St John Ambulance team. The prize money is a wonderful boost, and will go into paying for the venue hire for our next youth leadership course, so that even more young people can be the difference between a life lost and a life saved.”

Explaining the judges’ decision to present the award to Maria, Tom Leftwich, Office for Civil Society said: “I have been hugely impressed with the contribution made by all of the nominees for PNE’s Volunteer Awards and none more than Maria Podlasiuk.  Maria epitomises versatility in volunteering, making a huge commitment in a range of different ways to engage young people in the invaluable work of the St John Ambulance.  I have no doubt that highlighting Maria’s work in this way will inspire others to think about what difference they can make in their communities.”