The Shackleton Foundation disburses its funds by way of Shackleton Foundation Leadership Awards (SFLAs).

You should note that the Foundation grants financial awards to leaders, not to charities, although how an applicant is seeking to "make a difference" particularly to the benefit of the less advantaged, is likely to be via a charity. Applications should set out how the applicant matches the spirit of Shackleton. The Foundation DOES NOT ordinarily support expeditions, although exceptional cases may be considered.

The application should set out what the leader's vision is, and how the fulfilment of that vision will benefit the less advantaged.

If you wish to complete a SFLA application form electronically download the MS Word version, complete it, and email to the address shown on the application form.

If you wish to complete offline, download the PDF version, complete it, and send to the postal address shown on the front of the application form.

 

Our awardees

Nick Nielsen

Nick is the co-founder of the youth empowerment charity, Envision.

Over the last 11 years, Envision has grown to work with thousands of young people each year from four offices around the country, helping them to set up their own social and environmental projects and realise that they can make a difference in the world.

The projects, tackling a range of issues such as drugs and gang culture, to homelessness and the environment, are outstanding. But more importantly, the impact this has on the young participants and their self-belief and desire to serve is even more profound.

Envision was founded as an example that our individual leadership and example is the most powerful tool any of us have in this world, and it's our responsibility to use it. It was on the basis of this activity that Nick was awarded the Shackleton Foundation Leadership Award.

After ten years leading the organisation, Nick passed on his CEO responsibilities but continues to be involved as a board member. He has since founded another social enterprise dedicated to using technology to empower citizens and governance.

For more information visit www.envision.org.uk.

 

Rachel Roser

'Heroes for the Future' is a UK not-for-profit organisation that helps young people raise their aspirations by focusing on the stories of heroes.

Rachael Roser was given an award by The Shackleton Foundation in 2009 to launch Heroes for the Future, and since then has worked with over 3,000 students across 12 schools. Children enjoy a varied programme of workshops, classwork and the chance to meet a real-life hero. This helps them to think about the kind of adult they would like to be and how to achieve their goals.

'Heroes for the Future' works as a collaborative partnership between schools, a group of drama practitioners and inspirational role models, who come together to meet children to talk about their own heroic adventures and/or inspiring careers. Teachers are briefed and given a pack of materials, lesson plans and activities to support the work. This can be used over the course of a single day or can form part of a learning journey which takes place over weeks or months.

For more information visit heroesforthefuture.org.

 

Carina Millstone

Carina Millstone is the Founder and Chief Executive of The London Orchard Project, a small charity that aims to develop a skilled community of Londoners to plant, care for and harvest fruit trees.

The London Orchard Project is concerned with building community resilience in a changing climate, increasing access to fresh fruit and improving the quality of the urban landscape. The charity works with community groups across London to plant, harvest and restore orchards, and has to date planted 22 community orchards and trained the volunteers necessary to look after the trees.

Carina received a grant from the Shackleton Foundation in early 2011, and will use this grant to work with four partner community groups - housing estate residents and park user groups - to plant and maintain four new community orchards in the winter of 2011.

Carina was also made a London Leader 2011 to support her work with The London Orchard Project.

For more information, visit thelondonorchardproject.org.

 

 

Caroline Fiennes

Caroline Fiennes is Executive Director of Global Cool, a highly innovative charity which encourages greener living.

Global Cool doesn't presuppose that people are interested in carbon, climate or the environment. Instead, it 'sells' green lifestyle choices by making them appealing. The charity uses social networking, film, fashion, music and entertainment to reach and inspire people to change, but also highlight the fun, adventure and cost benefits of greener lifestyles.

Caroline "grew up" in commercial marketing before leading the client service business at New Philanthropy Capital, where she helped charitable funders to make the most of their resources. She has worked with well-known names such as the Sainsbury Family Charitable Trusts, Big Lottery Fund, the Home Office and Eurostar, as well as many families and smaller foundations. She continues to write and speak about making charitable giving more effective, at www.carolinefiennes.com.

For more information visit www.globalcool.org.

 

Lee Healey

IncomeMAX was created by Lee Healey, a welfare benefits expert with many years' experience in the welfare rights advice sector.

IncomeMAX is a Community Interest Company and Social Enterprise that supports people in making sense of their benefits and tax credits entitlement. Its services help people to maximise income, move into work, minimise energy & water bill expenditure, maintain social wellbeing and find the right debt advice.

Welfare advice is a key cornerstone of alleviating poverty, yet every year, many thousands of vulnerable people do not get the benefits and tax credits advice and support they need to fully maximise their income. To ensure that IncomeMAX can provide help and advice to Britain's most vulnerable customers, IncomeMAX has launched a unique Vulnerable Customers Fund which it uses to award free IncomeMAX memberships to vulnerable customers.

Receipt of an IncomeMAX membership means that vulnerable customers can access the IncomeMAX service and all of the much-needed welfare advice they require.

For more information on the IncomeMAX Vulnerable Customers Fund please visit www.incomemax.org.uk.

 

Brendan Magill

Figures from the Labour Market Survey, produced by the Office of National Statistics, show that approximately twice as many disabled people who are in work choose self-employment than is the case for the workforce in general. Over the past fifteen years, Brendan Magill has worked extensively with many organisations which have provided support services to disabled people in work.

Through this experience, both as a disabled entrepreneur and a supporter of other disabled people starting their own businesses, Brendan has created a new social enterprise vehicle celled "UKSEABLE". The UKSEABLE project is intended to provide support to people who have disabilities or long-term health conditions, and who run or aspire to run their own small businesses. This will be achieved by building a pan-disability support network, mentoring and training service. It is intended that this network will become a viable and sustainable business in its own right.

Through the establishment of a mutual support network for disabled entrepreneurs, a smaller group of entrepreneurs with disabilities or long term health conditions will provide various professional support services to disabled people in business. These individuals will be trained to work as mentors, working one-to-one with people requiring support. They will also provide group training and workshop sessions to entrepreneurs and disabled people in conventional employment.

For more information, visit Brendan's website, www.magill.co.uk.

 

RISE

Bailie Aaron and Daniel Marshall are the co-founders of RISE, a social enterprise start-up that won this year's Cambridge University Entrepreneur's Social Enterprise Award.

Baillie Aaron is a graduate of Harvard University and a current MPhil student in Criminological Research at the University of Cambridge. She spent two years at Harvard's Program in Criminal Justice Policy and Management, and at the same time founded Venturing Out, an educational non?profit recruiting volunteer business leaders to teach entrepreneurship to court?involved young people and incarcerated adults. She has completed training on building and running a mentorship program, with a focus on at?risk young people. Baillie is a Boston JA Business Hall of Fame inductee and a PresenTense Social Entrepreneur Fellow.

Daniel is a graduate of University of Teesside (BSc) Criminology and Psychology, University of Leeds (MA) Criminological Research, in which he worked with Leeds Youth Offending Service to analyse the changing characteristics of 9,052 first time entrants to the youth justice system from 2002 – 2007. Daniel is currently a PhD student at the Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge, focusing on the implementation of mentorship programmes with young offenders. Daniel also spent five years working as a police officer with Durham Constabulary, UK (2003 – 2008), and has vast experience of teaching young people from a variety of backgrounds in the UK, France and the USA.

RISE's mission is to provide court?involved young people with opportunities for role modelling, inspiration, success, and enrichment through its coaching program. Studies have consistently shown that at?risk young people benefit tremendously from on-going mentorship relationships. The RISE program is based on empirically?tested best practices and provides adult coaches for youth in custody, commencing during their sentence and extending through to their community re?entry.

For more information on RISE, please see this YouTube video.

 

Shauneen Lambe

Shauneen practiced as a criminal defence barrister before moving to the USA, where she qualified as an attorney working with Clive Stafford Smith representing those facing the death penalty. Her work included representing a number of juveniles on death row and being part of the team that exonerated Ryan Matthews in 2004, after five years on death row.

In 1999 she helped found Reprieve, a UK charity that uses the law to enforce the human rights of prisoners, from death row to Guantanamo Bay, and was a board member until 2006. In 2003, she established the Youth Department at Lawrence & Co. Solicitors which provides specialist legal representation to children in the criminal justice system. In 2006, along with Aika Stephenson, she set up Just for Kids Law (JfK) a charity that provides support, advice and representation to young people in trouble with the law. In 2010 JfK was voted the best not-for profit legal aid organisation in England and Wales.

Shauneen's work is now dedicated to strategic litigation, bringing cases that will change the whole legal landscape for young people. She brought the ground-breaking case of TP v. West London Youth Court, introducing into domestic courts the concept of 'effective participation' as a prerequisite for young people being tried in the criminal justice system.

In 2006, Shauneen was selected as one of Management Today's 35 Women Aged under 35, a list of women who were 'judged to have the potential to reach the top of their chosen careers'. In 2010, Shauneen was chosen to be a World Economic Forum 'Young Global Leader'. She is honoured to be a Shackleton Fellow in 2011.

For more information visit www.justforkidslaw.org.

 

 

Harriet Laurie

Harriet is running a very successful project in HM YOI Portland, Dorset. It is an intensive seven day course with horses, in which Young Offenders learn how to be calm (as a skill), to set and maintain a focus even when things get difficult, and that they can achieve amazing results if they take care of their own thoughts and emotions.??The outcomes so far have been fantastic, with really difficult prisoners going on to engage with education for the very first time, talk of having hope for their futures and sustaining better behaviour.

An independent academic evaluation of the project is in progress. The Shackleton Leadership award will allow Harriet to continue running courses at the prison during 2011, enabling an independent academic evaluation to take place.

To find out more about Harriet, click here.

 

Emma Morris

Emma Morris is the founder of Beyond Youth, a social enterprise, and creator of the Chance 2 Change project.  

Beyond Youth aim to address the increasing numbers of young people engaging in offending behaviour, gang related violence, and the reoffending rates of those released from custody.  Beyond Youth also aims to increase the numbers of young people in employment, education, or training.  Through the Chance 2 Change programme, offending behaviour is reduced by providing an intervention that tackles the real reasons why they are offending, and empowers them to make the decisions necessary to break this continuous cycle.   

Beyond Youth deliver highly successful, intensive group-based interventions, through their unique specialist project Chance 2 Change, for young offenders and those at risk of offending, aged 14-25.  The programme reduces reoffending amongst those referred, increases life chances, and produces significant cost savings to society.  Chance to Change increases the emotional intelligence of all those referred, enabling them to make better life choices.  

To find out more about Emma, click here.

 

 

Miguel Dean

In 2011 Miguel founded the social enterprise CIC 'Miguel Dean - Youth Training and Development'. His work mainly involves delivering training to professional who work with disadvantaged young people, and working directly with young people. He also speaks on overcoming adversity, coaching one to one and helps design youth training projects.

Through unconditional positive regard for the young people he works with and excellent communication skills, significant relationships are forged, which are the key to unlocking learning potential. The essence of his work is based on the premise that "I am not what happened to me. I am what I choose to become." (Carl Jung).

Miguel suffered a traumatic childhood which led to a life of drugs, alcohol and violence, and subsequently to homelessness, begging on the streets of Edinburgh. With the birth of his son came the realisation that it was time for him to take responsibility for his life. these experiences as a child and young man, and the qualities that he developed, mean that he is ideally suited to support others who have not had the best start in life. Through thirteen years of working with young people he has come to learn that it is not just what you do but who you are that matters when we endeavour to inspire and motivate others.

To find out more about Miguel, click here. 

 

Julia Bengough

Julia Bengough has been working in Mvumi, Tanzania for most of the last five years, teaching English and administering a sponsorship programme.   She arrived as a volunteer for an English charity in January 2007 with a TEFL qualification and little else and has since been on an extreme learning curve becoming a member of staff in an Anglican Secondary school. She has also co-ordinated a team of BBC journalists who came to film one of her blind students. You can see more here.

Julia gained a TESOL diploma in 2010 and spent time researching the specific area of need for English teachers in rural Tanzanian primary schools.   She also started what will be a regular intensive English course for primary school-leaving children in 2011, which has proved successful. PRIMARY FIRST is a project in rural Tanzania which supports teachers from a group of 20 primary schools who teach over 13,500 children between them. The grant from the Shackleton Foundation will allow Julia to build on this  important work.

The opportunities to improve the quality of life in rural Tanzania are dependent on education.  These schools have scant resources and the teachers are expected to deliver the curriculum under the most challenging circumstances.  Education from Secondary school is in English.   The primary school teachers generally have a very low level of English themselves but are required to deliver English syllabus to intermediate level.  Lack of subject knowledge results in absenteeism and low morale amongst the teachers. Local education officials have been in discussion with Julia about the need for English courses for the teachers and Julia has been writing a course and developing hand-made materials to start the first pilot project in March 2012.