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Who won last year?

Social Enterprise Award

Shepshed Carers
Sarah Sanders and Pauline Graves founded Shepshed Carers in Loughborough in 1994 as a workers' co-operative, convinced they could provide better care than they had witnessed. Their mission was to provide high quality care for the elderly and others with high-dependency needs in their own homes. Since then it has grown from strength to strength, with 80 workers/members, 250 users, and a turnover above £550,000. Users cite the services as high quality and reliable, and their families receive exceptional levels of support and peace of mind. Local authorities, whose contracts account for 80% of Shepshed's work, benefit from proven standards of care, and the local community continues to benefit from the creation of 80 well-paid, secure jobs.

Social Entrepreneur Award

Nick Baxter
www.cornerstone.org.uk
Since founding Cornerstone in 1980, Nick Baxter has transformed the way care is provided and helped to change the public's attitude to learning difficulties - immeasurably improving thousands of lives. Cornerstone Community Care is Scotland's pioneering provider of care to people with learning disabilities and special needs. In 2004 it grew by over 30 per cent, to reach over 900 adults and children. Cornerstone popularised the idea of helping people to become independent, by supporting them in their home and helping them to find work, rather than languishing in a hospital. Nick Baxter has led the Aberdeen-based organisation to cover 140 locations and turnover £19.5 million in 2003/4.

Young Social Entrepreneur Award

Jason Pegler
www.chipmunkapublishing.com
At the age of 17 Jason Pegler, now CEO of Chipmunkapublishing, was diagnosed with manic depression and spent six weeks in a hospital for mental health. The experience had a profound impact on him, and since then he has dedicated himself to helping others in a similar position and to changing public perceptions about mental illness. In 2001 he received a grant from MIND to print 300 copies of his autobiography "A Can of Madness", using the proceeds to start Chipmunkapublishing with co-founder Andrew Latchford. Their aim is to raise mental health on the political agenda, remove the stigma attached and make it "part of the social norm".

In October 2004 Jason set up the Chipmunka Foundation, which aims to become the world's largest mental health charity. He has appeared on BBC One discussing patients' rights, and has lobbied for funding at 10 Downing Street. No doubt he will continue to give a voice to those who have too often not been heard.

Overseas Impact Award

Bishopston Trading Company
www.bishopstontrading.co.uk
Bishopston Trading Company was founded in 1985 to provide fair employment in the South Indian village of KV Kuppam. The enterprise has become a thriving workers' co-operative, with five shops in England and a team of 168 tailors and 300 handloom weavers in India producing a range of clothes in organic cotton. The profits generated are used to benefit the people of KV Kuppam through the South Indian Rural Development Trust.

The villagers insisted they wanted fair work rather than charity, and the company has always upheld that ethos. Men and women are paid equally, child labour is not used, and employees enjoy a range of benefits such as medical care, maternity allowance, a creche and after-school activities. Bishopston Trading has become a shining example of the ways that Fairtrade can be central to a sustainable, successful business, without external funding and without volunteers.

Social Enterprise Champion (Organisation) Award

Traidcraft
www.traidcraft.co.uk
Traidcraft is the UK's leading fair trade organisation, fighting poverty in the developing world through trade since 1979. Founded on Christian principles, the organisation's core mission is to enable poor, unorganised producers to trade on an equal basis in developed markets, and to develop their business practices to a sustainable level. To that end, Traidcraft seeks to influence lawmakers and public opinion to support fairer trade practices.

Traidcraft's unique structure, combining a PLC with charitable and educational arms, furnishes the organisation with the professionalism and credibility needed to fulfil its advocacy aims. With access to the charitable, business and public sectors, Traidcraft is a leading promoter of corporate social responsibility and a pioneer of social accounting. Traidcraft embodies the ideal that a business should work in the interests of all its stakeholders, and be accountable for its impact on the poor.

Social Enterprise Champion (Individual) Award

Richard Adams
www.communityviewfinders.com
Richard Adams has dedicated his working life to alleviating poverty in the developing world. In 1974 he began importing handicrafts from farming communities in Bangladesh. This initiative grew to become Tearcraft, the craft marketing arm of the major UK relief and development charity Tearfund. In 1979 Richard established Traidcraft. Richard set up the Fairtrade Foundation in 1989, providing a fair trade 'seal of approval' for products from the developing world and helping to put fair trade on the corporate agenda. In 1994 he founded Out of this World, Britain's first chain of Fairtrade grocery stores.

After writing "Who Profits?" in 1989, exploring alternative methods of trade, Adams went on to set up the business research charity New Consumer and co-authored many other titles.

Richard Adams has established and developed more than a dozen successful charitable, community-owned, or co-operative enterprises. Each organisation aims to encourage constructive social values and empower people so that they can provide for themselves. He was awarded the OBE in 2001 in recognition of these achievements.

What is social enterprise?
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