Ten Irish social entrepreneurs received a financial boost today when they were awarded €100,000 each from the Arthur Guinness Fund to develop their enterprises.
The winners, whose projects include a scheme to encourage textile recycling and a suicide-prevention service, were chosen from 484 hopefuls who applied to the fund in October last year.
Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Innovation Batt O'Keeffe presented the cheques at a ceremony at the Guinness Storehouse in Dublin. He said social entrepreneurs were central to Ireland's economic and social wellbeing.
"Social entrepreneurship puts people and communities before profit," he said. "It is an approach that helps citizens become active in their own communities and the result is an overall benefit to society itself."
The fund was established in 2009 as part of the Guinness 250 celebrations. It is designed to provide financial assistance and business expertise to social entrepreneurs, defined by Guinness as people with "a business head and a social heart".
The company donated €2.50 cents for each of one million signatures collected in pubs to establish a €2.5 million fund, which will be invested over two years.
Award winner Margaret Leahy is developing a model for community gardens in conjunction with community organisation Clár IRD. She said she was "thrilled" with the award.
"It's fantastic because at the moment a lot of the traditional grants have ceased because of lack of funding," she said. "This project would still be something in my head if it wasn't for Arthur Guinness."
Mediatraining.ie chief executive Gavin Duffy was one of ten external judges and said choosing only ten winners was a difficult task.
"I was hugely impressed with the standard," the star of RTÉ's Dragon's Den said. "In the current economy we're all talking about how difficult things are, so to meet people who are focused on giving back to their communities was very inspiring and uplifiting. I was looking for projects that aren't just in local communities but can also be rolled out across the country."
In addition to the financial help, the winners will receive ongoing business expertise from Diageo Ireland and peer support through Social Entrepreneurs Ireland's alumni network.
Diageo Ireland managing director John Kennedy said he hoped the awards would be a springboard to take Irish social entrepreneurs to the next level. "I want to look back several years from now and see significant change they've been able to deliver aided by this award," he said.
The application process for the next round of funding will open in October 2010. See www.guinness.com for details.