The winners of the 2018 Social Entrepreneurs Ireland (SEI) Awards were announced yesterday at an awards ceremony in the Mansion House, Dublin.

Now in its 14th year, the SEI Awards seek social entrepreneurs with big ideas to solve Ireland’s social problems. Hundreds of applications were received and a rigorous selection process identified eight winning social entrepreneurs for 2018. 
 
Since the Awards began, funding of over €7 million has been invested from private sector donors through SEI to support these initiatives that aim to tackle issues impacting Irish society. This funding is matched with non-financial support, equivalent to over €2.1million, that includes coaching, mentoring, business development, training and pro-bono support from some of Ireland’s leading corporate organisations. 
 
The SEI Awardees for 2018 are tackling a wide variety of problems through their innovative projects. They are included below:
· Change by Degrees (Dr Tara Shine and Madeline Murray) 
· Elder Home Share (Saoirse Sheridan)
· First Fortnight (David Keegan) 
· My Streets (Austin Campbell) 
· Prepare Me (Caitriona Waters-Crehan)
· Refill Ireland (Barry O’Connor) 
· Speech at Home (Dr Triona Sweeney and Georgina Wade) 
· The Abhaile Project (Michelle Moore) 
 
It was also announced at the Awards event that three social entrepreneurs from the SEI Alumni Network have been selected to receive further funding to scale their organisations’ impact on social change in Ireland. These organisations will receive a total of €155,000 in direct funding from SEI, along with substantial, targeted and bespoke support to grow and scale their impact from SEI’s community of business leaders and sectoral experts. 

The three organisations are:
· AsIAm (Adam Harris) 
· CyberSafeIreland (Alex Cooney and Cliona Curley) 
· Irish Men’s Sheds (Barry Sheridan)  
 
Speaking at the SEI Awards ceremony, CEO of SEI, Darren Ryan said, "Our 2018 Social Entrepreneurs Ireland awardees are ambitious, driven people, with innovative solutions to Ireland’s social problems. We feel that it is crucial as a nation, to find solutions to the gaps that exist in our services in Ireland, and we want to support the social entrepreneurs aiming to fill those gaps."

Source: www.businessworld.ie