Winners announced for the first Stephen Lloyd Awards

Three organisations working in the energy, youth and recidivism sectors have been named the winners of the first Stephen Lloyd Awards in the UK.

Energy Local, Go-Forward and Spark Inside will each receive £20,000 to develop their ideas and increase their social impact. 

Phillip Kirkpatrick, a partner at Bates Wells Braithwaite and one of the founding members of the Stephen Lloyd Awards Committee, said: “The awards are about creating success, not just celebrating it. 

“They bring together an amazing community committed to helping innovative projects get off the ground and deliver sustainable, systemic social change. The winning projects each made an exceptionally strong case for their ability to achieve that change and the entire awards community is looking forward to supporting them.”

The support from the network will keep us going through the sticky moments!

Energy Local is a fledgling social enterprise which has found a means for a community to pool their locally owned generation and manage local demand to reduce bills and carbon emissions. Founder of Energy Local Dr Mary Gillie told Pioneers Post the funding from the Stephen Lloyd Award will allow them to develop from the "prototype stage".  

She continued: "It will support our trial just south of Oxford where we are working with a community to show the savings they can achieve from matching their electricity use to their pooled solar generation. It will allow us to develop a second trial demonstrating how the data will be managed and how participants can be billed and the savings from using their community owned hydro generation.

"The in-kind support is invaluable; as a start-up we are inevitably short of some areas of expertise. To be connected to such a wide range of professionals will help us focus our skills more effectively, speeding up the development process. On a human level, the support from the network will keep us going through the sticky moments!"

Founders of Energy Local pose in a rickshaw as a nod to Stephen's love of environmentally friendly transport and cycling in particular

Fellow winner Go-Forward offers a ‘home-away-from-home’ centre, where individuals who feel isolated having left care facilities can go to receive advice and support. The final 2015 winner, Spark Inside, aims to address the issues of persistent reoffending and increasing prison violence, by improving relationships between prisoners and officers. It offers free, long-term, one-to-one life coaching to young people aged between 15 and 25 who are leaving custody, near to release and to those facing long-term custodial sentences. 

Founder and CEO of the Spark Inside Baillie Aaron said: "The current rate of reoffending in the UK is nearly 50% for adults, at a cost to society of over £10 billion a year. This reoffending rate has not changed in the past decade. When it comes to criminal justice policy, the current state of affairs is not good enough; it's clear a new approach is needed. 

"The grant provided by the Stephen Lloyd Awards serves as a catalyst to Spark Inside at a critical time, enabling the charity to test one of the most exciting new innovations in criminal justice services. Spark Inside's visionary new programme will create a more rehabilitative culture in prisons by training prison officers in basic coaching skills."

Bailie and her Spark Inside colleagues

The awards were launched this year in memory of renowned charity and social enterprise lawyer Stephen Lloyd, who died in 2014. Paying tribute to Lloyd last year, founding partner of global investment practice Total Impact Advisors Arthur Wood said: “Very few people are both visionary and practical combined with being genuinely ethical, generous and great company – what a loss to the sector, his family and to life.” 

The new awards aim to reflect Lloyd’s commitment to finding and supporting innovative ways of achieving social change.