London Social Justice 2008

For London based campaigners tackling poverty and its root causes. This award is geared towards providing solutions and opportunities to the problems facing the capital and its communities.

Sponsored by City Parochial Foundation

Winner

Ben Watson

FairPensions

Ben joined Fair Pensions in 2007 and works on The Campaign for Responsible Investment. The objective of the campaign is to alleviate poverty, environmental damage and human rights violations caused by corporations. The programme targets London-based pension funds and fund managers who own shares in these companies. The campaign aims to increase the awareness of investors of social, environment and government issues in their investment decisions. Last year the campaign worked in conjunction with Oxfam, using investors to persuade pharmaceutical companies to improve public access to medicines in India.

Finalists

Ian Gilmour

OK2B Campaign

ok2b is a mental health anti-stigma campaign which works in collaboration with other projects to achieve positive change in public attitudes towards people with mental health problems. ok2b wants to be innovative in the mental health field and to use events such as a comedy night at the Hackney Empire to raise awareness.

Jan Irwin

Families without Fear, The Minster Centre

Jan works for the Families without Fear campaign to highlight the need to invest more resources into researching the causes of domestic abuse. Jan's aim is to create new methods of research into the causes of domestic violence such as psychotherapy and psychology. Families without Fear also aims to develop training based on the findings of research to help improve the safety of survivors. Jan is working to build a coalition of like-minded campaigners on the issue of domestic violence.

Rebecca Ledwidges-Eaves

The Children's Society

Rebecca is a Campaigns Co-ordinator for the Safe and Sound Campaign run by The Children's Society. The social justice campaign is run on behalf of the 100,000 young people who runaway from home each year, to ensure they are properly safeguarded. Safe and Sound hopes to make local authorities adhere to statutory obligations and provide runaway's with immediate help. The first phase of the programme has resulted in the government's decision to launch a working group for runaways. Later in the year the group plans to release an action plan on safeguarding runaways in the future.