Portsmouth Business School
Portsmouth Business School fly flag for Britain
Thu, 06 Sep 2012 14:42:00 BST
Staff members of Portsmouth Business School were among the thousands of unpaid heroes of the Olympic and Paralympic Games.
Dr Martin Read, Head of Postgraduate Taught Programmes, and Ursula Smartt, part-time Law lecturer, volunteered to be games makers as part of London 2012.
As a London ambassador, Martin worked for six consecutive days in the first week of the Olympics making tourists welcome and helping them find their way around London.
Ursula Smartt, a part-time law lecturer, worked as team leader to a group of linguists providing translations of scores of languages for athletes and the media.
Ursula said: “I was one of the 70,000 games makers and I was helping to make Britain proud. But the voluntary spirit did not only include British individuals; in our team there were some 104 linguist foreigners, many of whom had signed up to contribute make the games the best in the world.
“I hope that the Big Society concept will have been transported to their countries as they returned, and that we will all continue to build on the enthusiasm we developed as volunteers at the 2012 Olympic Games.”