These are the 13 winners of the Corporate Social Venturing Challenge 2014.  They will receive investment and ongoing support to develop their business.  Read more about their inspiring stories below.

Circle Sports Hackney, photo credit: Matt Chung

Circle Sports aims to positively impact the lives of unemployed young people by providing a non-academic pathway into a variety of sectors; including business, retail and facilities management. We aspire to offer a unique wrap-around service, increasing confidence and motivation while providing training, real-life work experience and opportunities to build strong practical and entrepreneurial skills.

Team advant~age

Advant~age are a national social enterprise dedicated to supporting charities raise unrestricted incomes. They do this by enabling charities to offer their service users and supporters fully vetted and reliable products & services that trigger a donation to charity for each product purchased.

Digital Mum at work

Digital Mums is all about the training and mentoring mums to become online community managers and connecting them with promising new businesses who need their help to get digital.

David and Jane Wells (Ayudante) with mentor Mark Chadwick (Fusion 21)

Ayudante exist to create opportunities for local disadvantaged people, by offering in-house employment, work placements, training & development to help individuals progress into the future job market.
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The House of St Barnabas, London, photo credit Mike Tinney

The House of St Barnabas create unique work experience opportunities through their Employment Academy, which operates at the heart of our not-for-profit members’ club in Soho.

Dr Anatole S Menon-Johansson, Director, SXT Health CIC 

SXT Health Community Interest Company (CIC) is a social enterprise whose mission is to facilitate access to sexual & reproductive health care services. SXT has built a service for both providers and clients to support community provision, advocate for clients and to champion high quality care.

New uniforms for the Mum’s the Chef crew

Mum’s the Chef is a project of Skills To Donate – a social enterprise aimed at tackling long term unemployment women and young people, faced with barriers to employment such as lack of work experience, qualifications and poor English language skills.

Hereford Make in action

Hereford Make C.I.C, a social enterprise, is a metal, wood and forging workshop open to all, whether you are a hobbyist wanting to develop your skills, a student working in wood or metal, a person wanting to make or repair something themselves or a professional needing the space and equipment to work with in order to make your business more successful.

Two year four girls using Now Press Play headsets

now>press>play create and deliver an educational resource that brings the curriculum to life. In a now>press>play experience, the children put on wireless headphones and are plunged into the world of their topic. Immersed in sound, they become a character in a story, meeting people, discovering places and solving problems on an educational adventure they’ll never forget.

Steven and James co-founders of ParentHub

ParentHub is a smartphone app developed by teachers. It makes school communication accessible to all and is designed to improve parental engagement, increase teacher efficiency and reduce admin costs.

Swarm focuses on developing young business apprentices by supporting them to become commercially aware, enterprising and effective to deliver the greatest return on investment for your business.

 A group from Talentino! Photo credit, Trudi Fisher, Green Fish Photography

Talentino’s mission is to deliver face to face career development opportunities in an affordable and sustainable way that recognises the needs of all stakeholders – schools, parents/carers, employers, government and most of all young people.

Includer is a collaborative approach designed to increase whole school understanding of your disadvantaged/SEND students’ individual needs thereby improving learning and behaviour. It is supported by a web-based system which involves the whole school community in the creation of  individualised learning and/or behaviour plans.