Carmel McConnell

« back to entries list
http://www.magicbreakfast.com

Carmel founded Magic Breakfast, a child nutrition charity which delivers free, healthy breakfast food to 38 primary schools, currently feeding 1,300 children each morning. Many of these would otherwise start their school day too hungry to learn. To part fund this, Carmel designed and now runs Magic Outcomes Ltd, a leadership development firm. The judges were troubled to learn the UK’s terrible track record on child nutrition. Carmel’s work has done much to tackle this important issue.

1 nomination from readers

  • Carmel is passionate about ensuring each child starts the day with the right fuel for learning – that’s why she has set up a charity which provides free healthy breakfast food for primary school children who otherwise would start the day too hungry to learn. She is equally passionate about connecting respectful business leaders to low income school communities, and found that leadership development was a great link.

    Magic Breakfast plans to deliver free food to 250 primary schools by 2010, growing from 36 right now. Carmel realised that to create this scale of delivery, she had to create revenue. The Magic Outcomes business case is simple - business leaders need skills, knowhow and the ability to create trust as well as profit. The programme fits that agenda, as well as individual desire to make a difference. In terms of money, each one year programme costs £5k (for 15 days in school development including coaching) and of that £2.3k goes to Magic Breakfast - enough to fund a breakfast club feeding 50 children each morning, for a whole year.

    Her approach is one of respectful partnership, encouraging everyone to learn from each other's experiences and to find answers for the long term. In terms of the Upstarts award, Carmel has, for the past seven years, re-mortgaged her home and seen a drastic reduction in her income in order to create a social enterprise which is innovative and offers new answers to deal with the expanding chasm between rich and poor.

    She is optimistic about creating a new wave of socially impactful leaders, and shows great encouragement for others in her day to day work. She is proving that social enterprise can help solve social failures long term, and has a clear entrepreneurial vision of how to reduce child hunger, involving respectful business leaders in the UK.

    This is why I think Carmel should win the award.

    Nominated by Elie Ball, 17 May 2008

Post your comment

We want to encourage people to comment on our content and to exchange views with other readers and hope this will be done on a courteous basis. However, if you encounter posts which are offensive please let us know by emailing comments@newstatesman.co.uk and we will take swift action where necessary.

Email updates

Sign up for the Edge Upstarts Awards newsletter. Just enter your email address here.