The Peter Cruddas Social Innovation Initiative

“The initiative will not only motivate Gold Award participants to go further, but will be an excellent platform for people to know what the Award can do in shaping one’s character to care for those around you.” – Rahul Shankar, Peter Cruddas regional intern for Asia Pacific

With the media promulgating the doom and gloom of current global crises, it seems that more people are focusing on problems than solutions. Nevertheless, social innovators all over the world are pioneering original ways to meet the challenges they see around them. Award participants are already benefiting communities, through their Service and Residential Sections, as well as through the acquirement of new skills. However, the Peter Cruddas Social Innovation Initiative seeks out those who have shown particularly enterprising attitudes, and have actively worked to solve a problem that they have identified either within their own communities or elsewhere.

Since July, the International Award Association (IAA) has been working with regional interns and a co-ordinator to find ‘social innovators’ from the 100,000 participants worldwide who are currently undertaking their Gold Award. These innovators have displayed outstanding leadership qualities, including the ability to mobilise large sections of the community. Their positive outlook and genuine desire to change society for the better has resulted in the creation of projects designed to ‘make a difference’ to those involved.

During the search, the interns have talked to Gold Award participants and the communities they have been working with to learn about the projects, and how the Award has impacted their lives. They have witnessed the positive outcomes, as well as the hard work that these innovators have put into such exceptional projects. By highlighting them we hope to demonstrate that the Award Programme is a tool to bring about social change, and also to encourage more Award participants to see themselves as agents of change in their own communities.

Having collected case studies from each region, the next step will be for a panel of young people to shortlist the projects they find the most inspiring, and most worthy of recognition as a ‘social innovation’. Three innovators will be selected from each region to attend a showcase event in London in spring 2010, attended by Peter Cruddas and HRH The Earl of Wessex. The most impactful of these social innovators will be chosen by Peter Cruddas, on recommendation from the IAA, to enjoy a tailor-made one week induction course within CMC Markets - the company Peter established in 1989.

Find out more by visiting http://www.intaward.org/about-the-award/Peter-Cruddas-Social-Innovation-/

[Quoted from Award World No. 61, October 2009]