The winners of the 2011 Social Enterprise Challenge were announced last night at an event at Coutts & Co, London. In front of an audience including many of the UK's most successful entrepreneurs, the 'Thank your Midwives' team from Oxford Brookes University were awarded the top prize.

The event marks the culmination of a six week business competition run by Prelude Group, an enterprise support organisation, and ThanksTo.com, a website for championing community heroes.

The competition had the support of a number of high profile entrepreneurs, including Dragon's Den's Doug Richard, Mike Clare, founder of Dreams Beds, Tim Campbell, winner of The Apprentice 2005, and Oli Barrett, Tenner Tycoon and one of the founders of Start Up Britain.

The judges chose the 'Midwives' team for the extensive TV, radio and press coverage they attained, their innovative approach to marketing and use of new media, and their success in engaging with a broad cross section of organisations, groups, and high profile individuals including Davina McCall and Sarah Brown.

Following on from its London launch last year, this year's nationwide challenge offered some of the most promising young people across the UK the opportunity to develop their business skills, experience, and learn from the best.

Over six weeks, the 85 young people selected to take part were challenged to run campaigns, as small businesses, championing and raising the profile of an 'unsung hero'.

Working in small teams, the groups uncovered a variety of community causes deserving of support - from midwives and volunteers to PCSOs, Wikipedia, and even music venues.

Incredibly, the teams managed to raise over 8,500 messages of support, which were left on the teams' campaign websites, and they attracted over 100,000 views of their web pages.

As well receiving training via an online platform offered by Prelude, they were supported by entrepreneurial mentors who gave up their time to advise the teams, on tasks ranging from raising sponsorship, to planning social media and marketing strategies, to sales technique, and market research.

The winning team received a £2000 prize plus tickets to Exit Festival in Serbia, while the runners up received £1000. Six participants also won prizes for their individual achievements, and will receive exclusive internships, work shadowing entrepreneurs to learn the secrets behind their success.

'The Unfogger' campaign, the close runner up to Thank your Midwives team, plan to continue their campaign on their own website, TheUnfogger.com. Julie Nuiaouet, Team Leader for the campaign, said:

“This enterprise challenge has enabled us to launch something in the 'real world', something that will not end with this competition. I genuinely love our website, our concept and our project. I am really happy we started this and I know that we would never have done that without this challenge. We are going to take it to another level, and already have plans for the near future.”