By Business & Finance 
Winners of the SEI Awards at the Mansion House with the Lord Mayor of Dublin Criona Ni Dhalaigh
Three social entrepreneurs have been awarded funding and support worth €420,000 at the Social Entrepreneurs Ireland Awards sponsored at the Mansion House in October.
Over the last 11 years, the programme has invested €6.26m in social entrepreneurs and over 1,000 employment opportunities have been provisioned for in the process.
CEO of Social Entrepreneurs Ireland Darren Ryan and CEO of DCC plc Tommy Breen presented the awards to the three Impact Award recipients who were each awarded funding and support worth €140,000 to develop their businesses. They are: Irene Lowry of Nurture, Gary Doggett of the Pro-Social Drivers Programme and Stephen Plunkett of U-Casadh.
A further six organisations each received funding and support worth €30,000 in the Elevator Award category. They were: Rachel Moore of Express YOUR Gender, Auveen Bell of Blossom Ireland, Wayne Dignam of Care Leavers Network, Keith Moore and Gordon Rose of Smartvote, Arlene Naughten and Lorraine Lynch of Sugru Therapy and Derek McDonnell of The Mojo Programme.
Irish company DCC has been the flagship sponsor of the Awards for the last five years. CEO of DCC Tommy Breen said, “It is a great privilege to play a role in getting behind Ireland’s brightest and most ambitious entrepreneurs working to have a positive impact on our society.”
Darren Ryan CEO of Social Entrepreneurs Ireland added: “Social Entrepreneurs Ireland has established a great track record of working with people that offer pioneering solutions to social problems. The organisations that we have funded and worked with have impacted the lives of 380,000 people on the island of Ireland to date.”
