By Business & Finance 
Darren Ryan, CEO of Social Entrepreneurs Ireland; local children Eoghan O’Reilly (age 6) and Ferdiad O’Reilly (age 4) from Rialto; previous award winners Niall O’Brien, Founder of The Grow Dome Project and Alex Cooney, Co-founder of CyberSafeIreland; and Donal Murphy, CEO of DCC plc, flagship sponsor of the awards, on a tour of The Grow Dome Project in Rialto. (Photo: Naoise Culhane)
Social Entrepreneurs Ireland (SEI) today announced a callout for individuals across Ireland to apply for funding and support as its Social Entrepreneurs Ireland Awards opens for applications.
The awards are supported by DCC plc with the cry of ‘Don’t let a good idea go to waste!’ being the plea from SEI. Up to €350,000 in funding will be up for grabs.
Darren Ryan, CEO of Social Entrepreneurs Ireland, said at the launch: “People are used to innovation in the commercial sector, but for Ireland to be in a position to tackle the challenges we face as a country, we need to support energetic people with entrepreneurial ideas, to take a different approach to solving social issues. We are uniquely placed as an organisation to be able to back these early-stage ideas with the potential to have an enormous impact on lives across the country. We are excited to see what ideas 2018 will bring.”
Previous winners include FoodCloud, Irish Men’s Sheds Association and CoderDojo.
There will be eight winners in the awards category. The award is valued at €25,000 with €10,000 in direct funding. Up to 30 people with early-stage ideas will win a place in the Academy for Social Entrepreneurs where they will receive mentoring and support and gain a chance at pitching for seed funding.
As well as this, SEI also said it will be launching a new Academy for Social Entrepreneurs in Galway.
Donal Murphy, CEO of DCC plc, said at the launch: “We take great pride in our role as flagship sponsor of the annual Social Entrepreneurs Ireland Awards. DCC has backed commercially-focused entrepreneurship for more than 40 years and we equally believe in the creativity and passion of Irish social entrepreneurs to make a significant contribution to solving our greatest challenges as a society.”
Interested candidates are asked to log on to socialentrepreneurs.ie to apply and find out more about the Social Entrepreneurs Ireland 2018 Awards programme. Applications close at 5pm on 20 March.
