StartUp Croydon Wins Enterprise Impact Award 2019

We are delighted to announce that StartUp Croydon has won the National Enterprise Network Enterprise Impact Award 2019 at its conference in London.

The award is not just about us and the work that we do but about the people who seek out our help and support to realise their dreams of starting a business or social enterprise.

This award is a joint award win in partnership with one of our clients, Dunia Shafik, an unemployed mother of four children, who originally enrolled on the SEEK programme to create her social business, A Life of Choices, to support families affected by youth violence and the knife crime epidemic, based on personal and direct experience.  Dunia has also worked on A Life of Choices on StartUp Croydon’s new Building Business Horizons programme, which has taken the best aspects of the SEEK programme to provide a 3-6 month intensive incubator to help further the tools and techniques delivered as part of our three day new business course.

Speaking after being presented with the award Dunia said:

“What we need most in life is to have people around us who believe in us, Im personally here today because three people believed in me and in my business idea and the social mission that I am leading and they are Anna, Geoff and John. Lots of our struggles will be resolved as a society if we start believing in ourselves and each other.”

StartUp Croydon’s Chair, Fintan O’Toole said:

“It is fantastic to see Dunia recognised for her work and achievements so far and to see the team recognised for the work they do collectively to make a positive difference in people’s lives.  This is one of the charity’s main objectives and the SEEK and Building Business Horizons (BBH) programmes have assisted in achieving this.  We hope to help more people make positive changes in their lives through the BBH programme so that they can realise their ambition and dreams.”

If you have an idea to start your own business or business with purpose, we will be running two new Building Business Horizon’s programmes in 2020 and further details and how to apply are here.

We look forward to continuing to help people in Croydon and beyond to make change happen.