This week’s Have I Got Social Enterprise News For You invites you to put on your party gear and sashay up the red carpet as we welcome you to an awards special. Invitations ready please, and if your name’s not on the list then you’re not coming in…
(All your names are on the list. We’re nice like that).
Social Entrepreneur of the Year Becky John celebrates with her two trophies.
Take your seats please…
- Drum roll…more drum roll… We’re starting with a bang and straight into the main award of the evening: This year’s Lloyds Bank and Bank of Scotland Social Entrepreneur of the Year is Becky John, founder of Who Made Your Pants. Massive congratulations Becky! Becky wins £10,000 and two trophies: the official one and the ‘Peter Duncan trophy’ made by SSE’s Chief Exec Alastair Wilson. You can read more about the awards here, and we’ll be opening recruitment for the next programme in early 2015.
- The ‘Course in Scotland that you absolutely MUST go on trophy’ is handed to SSE Scotland for their brand spanking new ‘Understanding Your Finances‘ course. It’s a unique opportunity for you to learn how to understand your organisation’s finances, what best practice is for reporting practices and how to reduce your organisation’s financial risks.
- ‘Best article in defence of social enterprise’ is awarded to this article by Gareth Hart, which was written in response to an article written by Iqbal Wahhab: End of the road for social enterprise?
- The SEEDbed incubator programme walks away with the ‘Best Newcomer‘ award. The £600,000 scheme will provide support to 50 social entrepreneurs. Part of the support will be provided by SSE Dartington, and applications are now open.
- Actual award alert: SSE Fellow Ann Cotton has been presented with the WISE Prize for Education, a highly prestigious award which recognises an individual for outstanding achievement in the field of education.
****We will now break for canapés and networking****
- Welcome back. Our next award is for ‘Best pre-Christmas Networking Evening in Southwark‘. And the winner is… Community Action Southwark’s Social Enterprise Network which takes place on December 11th from 5.45 – 7.45pm. Well worth heading along if you can make it.
- The award for ‘Social Enterprise Feature in a Publication Formerly Edited by Boris Johnson’ goes to Freddy Gray, for his article Is the Social Economy boom just too good to be true? Sadly Boris can’t be here to present the award.
- Best interview with a social entrepreneur? This one right here, as we meet We Walk The Line’s Kieran Tilley.
- Our final award is the catchy ‘best retail space available to social entrepreneurs in West London trophy’. The winners of the award are Petit Miracles, who are looking for up to 5 organisations to take the final spaces in their premises in W12.
And that brings us to the end of proceedings. I hope you enjoyed the event! Have a good week…
