Last year’s winners of the Accessibility Award Lifelites reported an increase of nearly £100,000 in money raised to help their charity due to the opportunities the awards bought for them. And in November – as a direct result of their success in the T4G Awards – Awards sponsor Microsoft picked Lifelites to take over the home page of their Bing search engine for a day, which put their name in front of almost 13 million users!

The winner of last year’s Community Impact Award Winners, Taylors/Starting Point Community Learning Partnership, reversed the fortunes of a declining shopping precinct by turning a fish and chip shop into an award winning social enterprise.

“Winning the Award has made people take us more seriously,’ says Anne Wallace, CEO of Starting Point. “To win such a prestigious award has had a big impact and there is now a waiting list on the precinct for businesses that want to invest.”

Ian Litterick, MD of Iansyst, who won the Working Together Award in partnership with XMA, says that the the Technology4Good Awards has helped reach  their core audience.

“In the markets we operate in we know that technology is hugely helpful for people with disabilities and the T4G awards helps promote and raise awareness of just what is possible. “

So what opportunities could the T4G Awards bring you? There is only one way to find out! Nominations close Midnight Friday 18th May 2012.

Enter now on this website.

CEO of Lifelites - Simone Enefer-Day

Lifelites, a double winner at last year’s Technology4Good Awards, has had a record year, delivering computer games and other high-tech kit to seventeen children’s hospices across the UK. Their support helps thousands of children with life-limiting illnesses to spend quality time with their families and keep in contact with their school and friends.

Lifelites’s Chief Executive Simone Enefer-Doy took centre stage at the launch of the Technology4Good Awards 2012 at the top of BT Tower in early March.  Not only did Lifelites win the Accessibility Award in 2011, they also scooped the Best in Show award, making them the Winners’ Winner.

“Winning two T4G Awards has really helped us increase the amount of work we do,” explained Simone. “The most projects we had ever done in a year was 12, but in 2011 we completed 17 new projects in children’s hospices and in 2012 we’re on track to do even more.”

Lifelites CEO shows off their Trophy

“We realised straight away the significance of winning the awards. It really helped to get people to sit up and take notice of us.”

Lifelites is a relatively small charity with a national remit. Founded in 2006 it has rapidly expanded to meet the demand of the mushrooming children’s hospices movement, which serves over 7000 children and their families.

It is the only charity in the UK providing and maintaining packages of fun and educational technology such as touchscreen computers, digital cameras and Xbox 360s for children in hospices.

Thanks to Lifelites, these children can spend quality time with their families, have the means to keep in contact with their school and friends, and the chance to simply enjoy themselves away from the constant reality of their illness

“There is no doubt about it. Winning this award has given us new impetus to us and our work at Lifelites.”

Photo by Alex Irwin

Here is Simone’s speech in full, in a video which is also available on our T4G YouTube channel.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Yp33RSL4z8

• Follow Lifelites on Twitter - @LifelitesOrg
• Find Lifelites on Facebook  
• All Photos by Alex Irwin

Nominations for this year’s Awards open on 7 March and will close on 18 may. The Awards Ceremony will take place in early July. Please add your name to our mailing list if you would like to be reminded of these dates.

Lifelites won two awards at the ceremony: recognition in the ‘Accessibility’ category for their work with assistive technology and declared overall winners as they collected ‘Best in Show’. This national  charity installs and maintains fun and educational technology for the 7000 children who stay, learn and play in all 44 of the UK’s children’s hospices.

With over twenty years’ experience in the charity sector Simone Enefer-Doy, Lifelites Chief Executive, says Lifelites were ready to make the most out of their victory on the night. “We recognised straight away how significant a moment this was for Lifelites,” she said, ”The kudos of being named winners has definitely opened doors.”

“It’s also been so our busiest ever year, so we’ve barely had time to celebrate since we won the awards. We’ve expanded our operations to include every hospice in the UK, including Northern Ireland,” she explained before adding “And our success at the Awards didn’t let us pause for breath.”

Perhaps most significantly, though, was Simone’s acknowledgement of what it did for the volunteers and staff who work for the charity. “We use technology to help very poorly children, who often have very little say in their daily routine, to have a little more control over their lives. Winning really brought home how great, and how necessary, the simple idea behind Lifelites is.”

Innovation Award

We Are What We Do/Internet Buttons

BT Contact Us Award

Transforming Customer Contact Team

Fundraising Award

The Pennies Foundation

Community Impact Award

Taylors/Starting Point

IT Volunteer of the Year Award

Colin Crook/Digital Unite

Accessibility Award

Lifelites

Community Voices Award

Vintage Radio

Working Together Award

XMA/iansyst

AbilityNet Excellence in Accessibility Award

Lloyds Banking Group

Best In Show

Lifelites

Congratulations to all these winners and to all of the finalists. Stay tuned for pictures and updates on all the winners by subscribing to the email updates in the right hand column of this page.

Our judges will now sift through the piles of entries and we’ll be announcing the shortlists of finalists next week – sign up for news in the right hand column to be the first to hear who’s been chosen.

The winners will be announced at an Awards Ceremony in London in June, which will be hosted by Mariella Frostrup.

We passed the 50 mark for entries over the weekend and now have 62 entries. They’re not evenly distributed across the categories but most have at least 5 entries and two have more than 15. Our goal is to have as many high quality entries per category so we check every entry as it comes in for eligibility and in a number of cases have suggested additional categories that could be relevant.

If you are thinking of entering but haven’t yet taken the plunge now is a good time to do it – with the Easter and bank holiday weekends looming you wouldn’t want to miss the deadline.