VOLUNTEERS’ WEEK 1-7 JUNE - Shash Patel

Volunteers’ Week is a nationwide annual campaign which takes place on 1-7 June and celebrates the fantastic contribution millions of volunteers make across the UK.  Every year, over 200 million people in the UK volunteer, donating more than 100 million hours to their communities every week. 

SATRO would also like to take this opportunity to thank all our volunteers for their invaluable contribution to make what we do possible - quite simply we could not do it without you.   In 2012, 650 active volunteers delivered over 6,800 hours of work, which is absolutely outstanding.  These volunteers come from a huge variety of backgrounds and each brings a new set of skills from their experience in business to inspire and enthuse children by sharing their enthusiasm for the working world, with particular emphasis on enterprise and STEM subjects.

In order to show the diversity of our volunteers we would like to highlight a volunteer each day this week.  We have chosen these particular volunteers as each one brings something completely different to SATRO…

Shash Patel 

Shash is Director, Information Risk Management & Privacy at Air Products and despite this hugely challenging role he still manages to dedicate at least a day each month to volunteering with SATRO.  Shash has a BSc in Maths and came to SATRO in 2005 via his previous work with Surrey EBP. Shash really has turned his hand to at all of our events from conducting Business Studies Workshops for A level students, using his business skills in our business games, mentoring, acting as a judge at our Annual Problem Solving Challenge, in our Careers Speed Dating workshops and also chaperoning children at our Science Festival.   

We asked Shash why he gets involved...

"It was twofold; firstly to give something back to my community in a tangible way – by helping to develop students of all ages, as education is a major interest of mine; secondly, people like myself, who have spent their entire careers in a corporate environment, tend to live in an “ivory tower”, losing sight of what is happening around them, especially at a local level – my volunteering enables me to establish those links to my local community and helps educate me on what real life is actually like – maybe some of our politicians should do the same!”