MYTIME Young Carers Charity has won the Stephen Lloyd Award, a highly prestigious charity award which is coordinated and funded by the Bates Well Foundation.
The award has been granted in support and recognition of MYTIME’s School Support Programme, which seeks to raise awareness of young carers within school communities, to equip schools with the tools and knowledge to be able to identify and more effectively support young carers and to make sure that young carers have everything they need to be happy and successful in education and beyond.
The Stephen Lloyd Awards, which seek to recognise and support early-stage charities and enterprises which serve a social purpose, and which are now in their 6th year, have provided financial and pro bono backing to a wide range of organisations since their establishment in 2015. Created to honour the memory of the late Stephen Lloyd, former Managing Partner of Bates Wells, the Awards help early-stage enterprises that have an innovative idea which deliver genuine, sustainable social change, to get off the ground.
Assisting organisations such as these was a passion of Stephen’s, and the Awards have continued Stephen’s legacy by making a significant, positive impact on a wide range of social enterprises in need of professional guidance or financial support.
Stephen Lloyd Awards winners are democratically selected by the entire community of charity and social enterprise experts who support the awards. That community includes philanthropists, social investors, lawyers, accountants, governance and management specialists and many others. Winners also receive valuable pro bono support from that community.
MYTIME CEO Krista Sharp said, “We are absolutely blown away to have won the Stephen Lloyd Award. It was a huge honour to have been shortlisted and to be considered alongside the other exceptional projects involved. We were one of 10 finalists and were pitching for support for our recently launched MYTIME School Support Programme.
“The judging process involved us producing a 1- minute pitch, which was shared with 130 people at an online awards ceremony.“The online judges then selected 3 charities who they wished to learn more about, and were subsequently assigned to 3 different breakout rooms, one after the other. Within the breakout rooms, each charity had 10 minutes to further showcase their projects and its ambitions. We were asked some really thought-provoking questions by the judges and were able to share more about our vision for support for young carers in schools.
“The audience was then asked to vote for their favourite project, and we are thrilled to say we won! This award comes with £20,000 and some incredible pro-bono support. We are delighted that two former young carers who were in the audience and are now both lawyers, with exceptional expertise in both risk management and charity law, have offered to join our growing trustee board.
“Thank you so much to MYTIME’s Director of Fundraising, Penny Day, who wrote the most amazing presentation and spoke so fluently about her own experiences as a teacher.This award is a true recognition of all the hard work the team at MYTIME have put in over the past year, and I couldn’t be any prouder of their commitment, passion and ambition to level the playing field for all young carers.”
Concluding, Penny Day advised, “The Stephen Lloyd Award will provide us with an incredible opportunity to continue our growth and achieve our ambitious goals. It will enable us to expand our work with schools across Dorset and also to reach out to other areas across the UK. Hearing that we had won quite literally took my breath away! We are just blown away to have been given such a special opportunity and to now be included in the incredible Awards network.”
49% of young adult carers (aged 18-25) are currently unemployed. The MYTIME School Support Programme seeks to encourage schools to review their provision for young carers and is designed to improve a young carer’s educational experience and outcomes. The programme launched in September 2020 and is now running in 28 local schools in Dorset.
About MYTIME Young Carers
MYTIME Young Carers seeks to provide young carers between the age of 5 and 25 with the support, opportunities and friendship that help to level the playing field. In the UK, there are an estimated 700,000 young carers, yet only 166,000 are registered as such. This means that the vast majority are facing the challenges of caring for a vulnerable relative, without support from their school or local authority. It also means that the scale and nature of the challenges young carers face are hidden and often misunderstood. It is our aim to help young carers overcome these challenges, and to create a society which is more aware, inclusive and supportive of young carers.
About Stephen Lloyd Awards·
Stephen Lloyd Awards is an initiative of the Bates Wells Foundation, an independent, UK-registered charitable incorporated organisation (CIO) (1150321).
It focuses on supporting sustainable social change and has given over £250,000 in grants to ground -breaking causes since 2015.·
Winners are democratically selected by the entire community of charity and social enterprise experts who support the awards. That community includes philanthropists, social investors, lawyers, accountants, governance and management specialists and many others. Winners also have an opportunity to receive valuable pro bono support from that community.