Another SSE Fellow wins an Award!

Recently we posted that SSE Fellow Yvonne won the inaugural Innovation in Lambeth award. Now another SSE Fellow, Mairi Duthie, CEO of Handmade Alliance, has won the Charity Times Social Champion Award.

They were one of few social enterprises nominated for the award that was given to the social enterprise or entrepreneur who could show they have “consistently delivered an outstanding service to the end-beneficiaries, promoted and raised its cause…and demonstrated excellence all round.”

Mairi stated: “It is a huge honour to receive recognition for the hard work that we do. We dedicate this award to the team members who are in prison rather than here tonight.”

The idea for Handmade Alliance grew out of Mairi’s desire to address concerns about social justice and use her design and teaching expertise to provide a public service on two fronts:

• To address the lack of small scale design manufacturing hubs in the UK,
• To offer a “through the gate” service: working with serving and ex-prisoners to develop their vocational textiles skills, with the intention of improving their chances of reintegrating successfully into society.

We would like to congratulate Mairi on winning this fantastic award. We hope the tools and skills she has acquired and refined over the Scale Up Programme will help her to grow, positively impact more people and win many more awards.