The Good Help Award will reward an organisation or team that demonstrates they are helping people transform their lives by helping them develop their sense of purpose and confidence to take action. 
There are three awards available - one £15,000 winner, and two £5,000 runners up. The winners of these awards will be asked to spend the money on activities that support their ‘good help’ work.
Nesta will use the award process to identify and celebrate all of the most promising ‘good help’ projects - not just the three winners - and will be looking for opportunities to share best practice and learning in ways that can help them all increase their impact.
The Award is open to anyone offering good help through an established project, programme or service. This includes:
• Organisations or teams from within the public, voluntary, community or social enterprise sectors
• Commissioners and/or providers
• Projects, programmes or services that have been operational for at least 12 months
How we help each other matters. Some help - what we call ‘good help’ - supports people to feel hopeful, identify their own purpose and confidently take action. Other help - which we call ‘bad help’ - does the opposite, undermining people's confidence, sense of purpose and independence.
Whether people want to improve their health, find work, or get the most out of education, ‘good help’ involves understanding what matters to each person and supporting them to build the confidence they need to take action.
‘Good help’ is core to many organisations trying to help people take action and improve their lives. Yet despite decades of research and good practice, ‘good help’ remains absent from many mainstream services and social programmes. Too many people receive ‘bad help’.
‘Bad help’ can have acute and obvious consequences, such as homelessness or addiction, but also chronic and subtle effects which make activities, such as parenting and healthy eating, much harder, and sometimes impossible.
The Good Help Award is one way that we hope to find out more about ‘good help’ and how it helps people take action. Nesta wants to find out who is providing ‘good help’ and to celebrate and share the vital work they are doing.
For further information and to enter, visit: https://goodhelp.challenges.org/
Deadline: Monday 30 April 2018, 12:00