Winners of Achievement Awards 2019


Headway Oxfordshire relies on the generosity of the local community to provide the essential service to adults that suffer from the devastating effects of a brain injury, whether it’s from strokes, accidents, tumours, meningitis or other forms.
I have been attending Headway Oxfordshire as a service user now for many years and they have made a huge positive impact and changed my life so much for the better, and this for many other service users who attend across four-day centre groups a week. :
Headway Oxfordshire truly is a special and essential lifeline to everyone whose lives are impacted by it, and to have been running for 30 years is an incredible achievement and a testament to the wonderful staff and volunteers who work hard to keep the service running and providing such vital help and support to those whose lives have been affected by a form of brain injury, people like me who without Headway Oxfordshire and their support my life would not have been improved so much.

After only a year, and after helping hundreds across the country, Rachel was awarded third place in the Best of Windsor Awards in the Business and Professional services category.
Rachel is a prolific networker both off and online – she works and lives the values of her business. She always has time for people from any size of business, she’s very much a people person and known to many as the “LinkedIn lady” and now has over 5000 followers on LinkedIn and over 100 recommendations. She can often be heard on local radio discussing the values of networking, LinkedIn and the importance of quality customer engagement. In 2017, her skills were acknowledged when she became the winner of both the Venus Regional and National Networker of the Year Awards.
In October 2018, after increasing demand from her legal Links2Leads clients for additional marketing services, Rachel launched a second business called Orion Legal Marketing. Rachel assembled a team of experts with over 100 years’ legal and marketing expertise between them, and together they offer full marketing and business development services, from strategic to the tactical, including branding, website creation, marketing, videos, brochures and social media. After less than a year, Orion Legal Marketing now provides legal businesses in the UK, Europe and the US with support for their online and offline marketing and business development campaigns.
Rachel supports and inspires her clients and is fully invested in providing them with services that help them grow and achieve their personal and business objectives.


Andy brings out the best in people he unites them and passionately fundraises because for him giving back means so much to him. His team of volunteers has increased to 30 plus after a group of ‘Superheroes’ came on board to help. These specialist volunteers raise funds and awareness by organising runs and walks and public events.
Andy has received a British Citizen Award at the Palace of Westminster in 2017. One of the most significant and proudest achievements was the single patient room that opened at the Oxford Children’s Hospital named after the organisation in March 2017 treating teenage patients. The achievement of a lifelong room for teenage patients only happened because of Andy’s passion to see the project of raising £40k for the sponsored patient room through.
At Christmas last year Andy and a group from his Army of volunteers visited the Children’s hospital JR wards to deliver the biggest amount of presents ever donated through the fourth ‘Sleigh2Give’ appeal which saw gifts estimated to be worth around 30k distributed out amongst young patients their siblings at the hospital and also young carers in South Oxfordshire and parents who benefit from the support of Home-Start to ensure that a wide number received a Christmas present they may not otherwise have got.

She began buying plastic-free products, started researching different recycling methods and firmly believes that children are the key to challenging us changes the way we think about waste.
Additionally, Mitali reduced plastic by using plastic free deodorants, shampoo bars, soap, EcoEggs for laundry and she now shops in zero waste and refill stores as much as possible. Like most consumers, she found it very complicated to understand what we can recycle via the council and her focus became making recycling simpler to understand. She also came across Terracycle, a company that takes the plastic waste that councils do not recycle and turn this into plastic pellets that can be used for playground equipment, whilst simultaneously benefitting charities.
On Earth day in April 2019, Mitali attempted to broaden awareness of Terracycle in her local village Twyford by running a competition which was promoted by the Henley Standard. Through a local magazine (RG10) promotion of the event she met Emma Donald from the action group Twyford Together, and the two of them pushed to launch Terracycle collection points into Twyford. Mitali is now on the Steering Committee for newly formed Twyford Rethinks Its Plastic (TRIP), a group which is working on reducing single use plastic in businesses and has accredited 5 business as plastic free. TRIP’s agenda is to encourage residents to: Refuse, Reduce, Re-use, Recycle, Terracycle or Ecobrick before allowing waste plastic to go to landfill.
The next stage is to accelerate educating Twyford residents, with a specific push on EcoBricks. TRIP Is attending events in Twyford and working with local schools in order to spread the word
Mitali says “The EcoBricks are being sent to a homeless charity in Reading to build shelters, an initiative being lead by two amazing Twyford residents Gordon Holmes and Holly McRitchie.

Melanie Meads, founder of Q1Care, is an active member of the Gap community and has been involved in many community services over the years, from being a school governor, working for a couple of the local businesses and being the treasurer for the scouts for a time. She is a dementia champion and is a member of the Dementia Action Alliance group in Reading.

