The Walter Dickie Leadership Bursary reopening for applications this August
Mrs Shael Dickie presenting last year’s winner Steve Brooks
with the Walter Dickie Leadership Bursary
The Walter Dickie Leadership Bursary aims to help leaders in the
third sector to develop their entrepreneurial leadership skills. A
bursary of £2,500 is awarded annually to someone in a leadership
role within a third sector organisation in Wales to help them
become a more entrepreneurial leader.
We’ll be reopening the bursary at this year’s National
Eisteddfod as part of the WCVA’s ‘Leading by example: a
conversation for charity leaders’ event. Applications will be
accepted up until the closing date on 19 October 2018. The winner
will then be announced at our Annual General Meeting and Lecture in
November.
The parameters of how the bursary can be spent are open and
applicants are encouraged to come up with interesting ideas to
support their own development as an entrepreneurial leader. Walter
had a passion for travel and for learning, and WCVA wanted this
bursary to reflect that. The money could for instance be used:
- on a course of study
- on funding a visit, possibly overseas, to see how others
approach things, or - simply anything that the beneficiary feels will move them and
their organisation forward
There is no formal scoring system for applications. The judging
panel are looking for the proposal that inspires them most and is
in keeping with the ethos of the award. All that is asked in return
is that successful applicants share their experiences within their
own organisation, with WCVA and with the wider sector.
Last year’s winner
Steve Brooks from Sustrans
Cymru was announced as the first successful Walter Dickie
Leadership Bursary recipient at the WCVA AGM and Annual Lecture at
Venue Cymru in Llandudno on 22 November 2017.
Sustrans Cymru is a charity that aims to make Wales a better
place for people to walk and cycle. Steve used the bursary to fund
enrolment on the ‘New Technologies and Changing Behaviours’ course,
part of the Global Challenges in Transport programme run by Oxford
University’s Oxford Leadership Programme.
The bursary also paid for Steve to travel on a study visit to
Copenhagen for the annual Copenhagenize Masterclass, to
learn how they helped transform their city into a bicycle-friendly
urban centre. To bolster the impact of Steve’s activities Sustrans
organised mentoring and ongoing strategic advice to complement his
learning.
WCVA will be accepting applications to the bursary on 7
August 2018 – Please
contact Alun Jones to find out more.
About Walter
As a member of WCVA’s board Walter Dickie’s expertise,
experience and commitment to the third sector have had a profound
impact on the work of WCVA and those who had the pleasure of
working with him.
For more than ten years Walter supported WCVA as a trustee where
he played an instrumental role in guiding the organisation and
helping to set up the ground-breaking Communities Investment Fund
which lends money to social businesses. That fund still runs today
and remains the cornerstone of so much of our ongoing social
investment activity.
Thanks to Walter’s dedication, WCVA has been able to lend nearly
eight million pounds to community organisations, many working in
the most deprived areas of Wales. Amongst a myriad of successes,
the fund has helped save the last pubs in rural communities, given
a kick start to the extreme sports boom in North Wales, provided a
safe environment for children whose foster care has broken down,
brought old buildings back into community use, created hundreds of
jobs and enabled communities to control assets in their own towns
and villages.
Walter sadly passed away last year so to honour his memory and
continue the development of entrepreneurial leadership in the third
sector that he gave so much time to support, WCVA has set up The
Walter Dickie Leadership Bursary.