Awards could be a ‘launch pad’ to take your business to the next level

The Southwark Business Excellence Awards can act “as a launch pad” to take your organisation to the next level, according to the Business of the Year winner who is doing just that.

Peace Ballers – a revolutionary football club which uses sport, creative arts and intensive mentoring to empower young people – was crowned “best of the best” at 2020’s Virtual Awards Ceremony with its founder, Zion Zachary, securing Entrepreneur of the YearPeace Ballers has been getting back to the business of playing football with excitingly, an increase in numbers, as lockdown measures relax – and expansion is on the horizon.

A Mayor of London audit gave Peace Ballers an excellent score and a recommendation that the project be scaled across London. Zion is now applying for funding from the Youth Endowment Fund, led by the Home Office and Impetus, to expand Peace Ballers to youth crime and violence hotspots across London.

Zion said: “Southwark Business Excellence Awards helped us establish a sense of greater credibility and opened doors. I listed our Business of the Year win on the funding application and out of 300 applicants, we’re now through to the next stage.

“That’s for a considerable amount of money to be able to take our project across the entirety of London and after that period of London expansion, to become a national organisation. We’re using the sport as an engagement tool to help young people develop the soft skills needed to disengage from negative behaviours.”

Peace Ballers also launched EVOE in January, a new digital platform that allows grassroots clubs to monetise their popularity through streaming, shirt sales, ticket sales, etc.

With 16 registered companies, work is continuing on building in key features, recruiting local clubs, developing partnerships with local organisations and talented, creative individuals such as artists.

“We’ve realised we need a lot more staff to be able to develop the platform to the next level so we’re now in the process of securing investment to be able to scale up our team,” Zion said.

He added that the marketing materials provided by the awards campaign have been very useful, for example, the strip that can be included in an email signature.

“Just sending emails and communicating with people establishes a greater sense of credibility for the organisation. If they want to take what they want to do to the next level, the awards are almost like a launch pad for that,” Zion said.