This follows on from the success of our involvement with O2's Think Big programme which Adam and SAV has been involved in for the last 2 years.

The funding and continued support from both O2 and UnLtd will serve to develop the charity and continue our aim for sustainability.

Funding will be used to acquire additional training for our team to be able to deliver Basic Life Support, conflict resolution, anger management and personal safety sessions. This will not only enhance our school based work but also open our services up to the corporate sector to diversify our market and income streams.

We will also be using some of the funding to contribute towards our free workshop delivery and towards the end of 2014 we will be looking to organise a conference in the South West on violence prevention.

We hope that the conference will enable us to move away from the small community campaign image we have and be recognised as a unique and specialist violence prevention organisation for our region. This is something SAV strives for as our level of expertise and knowledge rivals any of the bigger charities and organisations. We hope that we can achieve this new status and I have no doubt that in time we will.

The support from O2 and UnLtd will be invaluable when we begin preparations for this. Below is the press blog post written by Adam Fouracre for the Huffington Post on the award.

On the 25th September 2005 my family and I received the news every family  dreads. My 17 year old brother had been beaten to death on a night out with friends. As my parents so poignantly pointed out during the trial we had gone from arranging Lloyds 18th birthday to arranging a funeral. Lloyd lost his life through the actions of others and the only reason for his untimely death was that he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Despite seeing similar stories on nearly a daily basis in the media it is something you never think could ever happen to your own family.

I decided that it was time to do something about this. Time to stand up, turn the most negative of events in to a positive and lasting legacy, and do something to stop Lloyd's story repeating itself claiming more young lives and devastating other families.

Over the last 8 years I have been developing an organisation that aims to prevent violence through education and primary prevention. I started the charity Stand Against Violence when I was 19. The understanding of how young people learn in secondary school years was relatively fresh in my mind and so I used this to develop a film resource that I knew would have a powerful and positive impact on other young people. The success of this film and the workshops I developed have continued to achieve positive results. We continue to run workshops in all secondary schools across the South West and offer all new schools an hour free workshop. We are confident in our achievements and results.

Through my journey so far I realised how much of a problem violence is globally with over 200,000 young people losing their lives worldwide to violence, and only 1/5 being the result of armed conflict (World Health Organisation, 2000). In England and Wales alone there are 2.5 million incidents of violence each year (Department of Health, 2010) and for each incident a further 10-20 people are estimated to be affected (McVeigh et al, 2005). The number of us that experience violence in our life time is staggering and concerning which is why it is more important than ever that we do something to change the future of our society.

Over the last 2 years I was fortunate enough to gain the opportunity to work with O2 through their CSR programme Think Big. This programme funds young people developing community projects and provides support to help projects succeed. The most helpful element of this programme was the support and contacts that I was able to develop. I can say that the Think Big programme has accelerated the development of the charity into what we have today. Two months ago I pitched for the third stage of O2s programme which is now in partnership with UnLtd, another organisation aimed at inspiring and supporting social enterprise in young people. The funding amount is greater and the range of support and expertise now bridges two fantastic organisations dedicated to helping young people achieve positive community change.

The next stage for the charity is to secure sustainability for years to come. We have an approach that works effectively and it is crucial that we stand the test of time and continue to get our message out to future generations. Knowing how difficult funding to support existing projects is to secure I saw the O2 UnLtd programme as an opportunity not to be missed and travelled to London to pitch for their support. This month I received the news that I had been successful. I have been awarded £8,000 to develop the charity and given the chance to secure the future survival of Stand Against Violence.

The funding will provide us with training in a variety of new areas from anger management and conflict resolution to personal safety and basic life support. This additional training will enable us to improve the sessions we deliver to schools and also provide an opportunity to branch in to corporate delivery diversifying income streams. The funding will also enable us to continue to deliver free workshops and taster training days to secure further bookings and delivery.

Our ongoing training programme already existing in our organisation enable us to claim that we are a specialist organisation in interpersonal violence prevention for the South West. We hope to be able to utilise some of the funding to reinforce and increase that reputation through hosting a conference towards the end of 2014, with support from O2 UnLtd help making it a reality. I would like to see us moving away from the small scale community campaign image we have had for so long and start to be seen for what we are, a unique and specialist violence prevention charity for the South West.