On Monday 10th June the UEL/Haberdashers'  Entrepreneur Award Ceremony was held at Haberdashers' Hall. The awards are a partnership between the Haberdashers' Company and the University of East London designed to give businesses owned by UEL students and alumni a financial boost to encourage growth.

2019 award winners pictured with the Master and representatives from UEL

The programme has been running for over 10 years and has supported more than 100 students and graduates during this time. Between 2017 and 2018 the businesses turned over an impressive £338,000 between them, sustained 11 full-time members of staff and supported 7 student interns. This year's recipients have undergone a robust assessment process to get to this point. They each received an award of £2000 to help them grow their business alongside a support package including one to one mentoring, a funded student placement and speed mentoring based on the awardees' growth areas.

As you will see below, the award winners are very impressive, with innovative ideas, fantastic entrepreneurial spirit and an extremely strong work ethic. Congratulations to all - we wish them every success.

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Inuse-Reuse

Dennis Kwasi Boateng, MSc Sports Management

InUse-ReUse is inspired by the mantra 'Reclaimed, Recycled, Reloved' and was founded in 2017 to stop wooden pallets in Brixton Market being needlessly sent to landfill. The business model is wholly based on encouraging a circular economy where wood waste is recylced, upcycled or re-used. The three-tier system enables pallets and wood waste to be: 

• sent to a recycling plant
• upcycled into beautifully designed furniture
• or reused - with pallets sent back to suppliers

They are now looking to scale this model across other markets through partnerships with local authorities within London to ramp up upcycling production over the next 6-12 months.

LDN Physio

LDN Physio

Nicolas Colombo, Jonny Sumner & Mani Matharu. BSc Physiotherapy

LDN Physio provides Physiotherapy and Health & Fitness services to Londoners, businesses and events. The three founders are currently practising part-time within the NHS, as well as providing one-to-one consultations at their clinic based in The Refinery wellness centre in Hackney, East London.

LDN Physio also provides services to businesses and organisations through a corporate offering. The main corporate service is a Pop-Up Clinic where they provide Physiotherapy consultations and sports massage in business premises or events. Examples include WeWork and the London Marathon 2019, in collaboration with St. John Ambulance.

Through their business they are looking to break away from the traditional reputation of Physiotherapy and develop an innovative vision with businesses that share their values.

Aryha

Aryha

Cobi Ho, BSc Sport, Physical Education and Development

Established in 2018, Aryha has been featured on some of the UK's biggest celebrity and prime time TV shows, including ITV's Love Island and accumulated a 40,000+ people audience on its official Instagram page.

Aryha is transitioning into the UK's first ethical fashion streetware brand with the goal of making environmentally friendly fashion become a UK trend and more accessible than ever before.

With investment, Aryha hopes to change to renewable. sustainable materials such as recycled polyester from the ocean, hemp extract and bamboo cotton. Aryha aims to become a UK market leader by summer 2020 and revolutionise fast fashion.

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Curious Human

Ruth Hughes, MSc Positive Psychology& Phychology Coaching

Ruth Hughes is an educator, consultant, trainer and professional speaker in the field of wellbeing, using evidence-based positive psychology and coaching psychology to support students through acculturation and life changes.

After an extensive career in education across the world, Ruth retrained on the MAPPCP (MSc in Applied Positive Psychology and Coaching Psychology) at the University of East London, founding her positive psychology training and coaching company Curious Human.

Curious Human is a coaching business specialising in 'culture shock', which is a common shared experience of international students coming to study in the UK. Ruth works with universities and schools to provide one-to-one coaching and workshops; she is also looking to develop an online course to further broaden her impact.

Wordsmiths

Wordsmiths

Naomi Smith, MSc Positive Psychology & Psychology Coaching

Naomi is the founder of Wordsmiths, a social enterprise which runs creative writing workshops designed to improve mental health and wellbeing. By helping people to write and share their stories, Wordsmiths workshops improve confidence, creativity and self-expression. Naomi is also developing an app that incorporates the technique of 'free-writing' as a complementary product alongside the workshops.

Currently Wordsmiths is working with multiple mental health groups in the charity sector. They plan to branch out to businesses in the corporate sector in the near future.

Naomi will be speaking at a mental health event at Google Campus - focussing on burn out in start-up founders, and advice on how to avoid it.