Higher Education Social Entrepreneurship Award for Mapping for Change

Today I attended the UnLtd reception event for their Spring 2010 Level 2 Award winners. It was a very enjoyable and inspirational afternoon at the Huxton Apprentice, which is a Social Enterprise in its on right. The food was very good, so if you are looking for a place for a future event – you should consider it.

UnLtd is a charity that focuses on helping social entrepreneurs to develop their projects and achieve a better social impact. The level 2 Awards are for  ‘inspiring people who have innovative and entrepreneurial solutions to some of biggest challenges facing communities, wider society and the world.’ So it is a real honour to be awarded one together with Louise Francis who is running Mapping for Change.

Earlier this year, UnLtd teamed with the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), to create a new set of awards which will encourage Social Entrepreneurship in the Higher Education sector. The Higher Education Social Entrepreneurship Awards programme was designed to ‘provides financial and non-financial support across Higher Education Institutions (HEI’s) in England to develop their expertise, skills, knowledge base and business support structures in social entrepreneurship and social enterprise activity’. I understand that many applications were submitted, so winning the award does mean that Mapping for Change was evaluated as a useful enterprise and I do hope that the support that we will receive will help us to grow more rapidly in the coming year.

What was especially wonderful about the event today is that it provided an opportunity to meet other award winners across the country, and learn about their projects. These include Jess Jowers from the The Global Bee Project, which are working to encourage ‘bee guardians’ and by so doing increasing local bee diversity, or Graham Barker, who run KPAC in Knowsley and provide training to people with disabilities, or Jane and Simon Berry who want Coca Cola to use its supply chain to deliver medicine across the world, and also another colleague who I met in the past researching Social Enterprise, Tim Curtis who has now integrated social enterprise into the teaching at University of Northampton. All the other projects and awardees were not less impressive – just check the Giving World Online or Enabled by Design or Student Hubs.

I must say that in terms of Social Enterprise ‘energy’, the Ordnance Survey funded GeoVation have a long way to go compared to the activities that UnLtd nurturing…

It is one thing to read about the different projects, but it is amazing to be in one room with so many people with such great ideas and passion to work on their area. I do hope that we will have opportunities to work jointly some other UnLtd awardees!

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