Local charities receive $125,000 in awards

YouthBridge Association and Washington University honor six St. Louis charities

St. Louis, Missouri , May 03, 2007 -

The winners of the second annual Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation Competition (SEIC) were announced at the Awards Ceremony on Washington University's Danforth Campus. Six awards were presented to four local nonprofits and two students. The SEIC is designed to foster growth for social entrepreneurs who craft innovative processes, approaches and solutions to help resolve social issues.

“The goal of the competition is to create and empower agencies and programs to become more self-sufficient to better serve their client base,” said Rex Reed, YouthBridge Director of Community Development.  “This year’s winners exhibited outstanding dedication, strategic plans and creative tactics.” 

A total of $125,000 was awarded to the nonprofit teams that successfully proved that their ventures have social value and that their group has the ability to implement its plans. This year's winning teams were selected from a field of 24 entrants who had submitted their initial business proposals after attending a series of YouthBridge workshops that began in September. Over the past 10 months, the contestants participated in a series of open judging events and received feedback on their ideas.

This year's winners are:

• The Bridge St. Louis received the $30,000 YouthBridge Award. The organization plans to develop a youth entertainment center in St. Louis, where teens can connect to healthy activities and adult mentors.  The Bridge has operated in Joplin for the past six years and will use its award to establish a similar facility in St. Louis.
• One World Neighborhood Café received the $30,000 Incarnate Word Foundation Award. One World enhances the lives of socially marginalized women and their families by creating meaningful jobs that pay a living wage and provide benefits. One World also offers a variety of educational opportunities in the food-services industry to prepare women for success with future employers.
• The Miriam Center won the $30,000 Deaconess Foundation Award to fund an expansion of programs offered by the Miriam School. The Center will address the difficulty that families face in finding quality, coordinated therapies and services for their children with learning disabilities. Using fee-based services, the Center will offer diagnostics, therapies, tutoring, enrichment programs and educational consulting.
• The Nest received the $25,000 Skandalaris Award. The Nest helps women in developing countries create sustainable income for their families by providing micro-credit loans for the creation or maintenance of art-based businesses. To fund these loans, Nest has partnered with more than 45 designers from six countries to create an exclusive line of merchandise. The product line is sold to boutiques and is available via the Nest online marketplace.
• MOAR for Life received a $5,000 student award, MOAR for Life-South Grand Senior Ministry Social Venture, was founded by a member of the St. Louis community and is supported by Joy Clarke, MSW 2007. MOAR for Life helps senior citizens live safely in their homes, while leading physically and spiritually active lives.
• City Cents also received a $5,000 student award.  Student Felix Lloyd founded the other student winner, Cents City. Cents City is an online virtual environment that develops young peoples' skills in math, reading and other subjects while building their capacity to become financially savvy adults.

The YouthBridge Association and the Skandalaris Center for Entrepreneurial Studies partnered to create the SEIC, which was launched in September, 2005. Since then, the partnership has hosted a series of workshops and networking events for the participants, and last year announced its inaugural grants. The Deaconess Foundation and the Incarnate Word Foundation also sponsor the competition.

About YouthBridge Association

YouthBridge Association was originally known as the German General Protestant Orphan’s Association. This Association was created in 1877 and has served more than 25,000 children of the St. Louis community since its inception.  Today, YouthBridge is an organization that incubates new and more efficient ways to organize and deliver not-for-profit services to the youth in our community by blending modern business applications with traditional social service agency practices.

About Skandalaris Center for Entrepreneurial Studies

The Skandalaris Center for Entrepreneurial Studies at Washington University plays an important role in the local entrepreneurship community. Beyond training students to lead businesses in the future in order to strengthen the labor pool, the Center fosters networking, supplies resources for ideas to mature, and provides a forum in which these ideas can partner with venture capital. As an early resource along the idea-to-business path, the Program acts as a funnel through which the idea starts on its way to becoming a business. In this role, the Center serves the needs of both upstream and downstream "customers," with several customers appearing in multiple roles along this journey.