Helene Hugel, pictured above with Nikita Dixon, was one of 16 Dublin people honoured at the Social Entrepreneurs Ireland Awards Ceremony last week in recognition of outstanding work in the community.

This award enables her to further her work in supporting a more imaginative and creative, child-friendly approach to children’s health service provision.

After a long and vigorous application process, which included an interview, Helene joined the programme for a year. This gave her some financial support, training sessions, mentoring and peer networking. For Helene meeting other trainees was most important as they shared their ideas and collaborations arose.

Helene, originally from Upstate New York, is a puppeteer and a clown doctor who has been living in Ireland for 14 years. She specialises in art and health and is endeavouring to transform the hospital environment and the negative effects for children of being in hospital. The hospital can be an unfamiliar and frightening place and Helene has developed a series of hospital play sessions for children to help alleviate their fears.

Currently she is artist in residence in Tallaght Community Arts Centre, developing a performance in association with Monkey Shine Theatre Company. This piece of work aims to transform paediatric patients’ beds into imaginative, performing landscapes using puppetry, simple clowning, interactive storytelling, tactile set, and sound.

This will be launched in Waterford in January 2008, and from there tour hospitals and arts centres across the country. It will also be resident in The National Children’s Hospital Tallaght from November 2007.

Social Entrepreneurs Ireland, established in 2005, is a privately funded, not-for-profit organisation that believes innovation and social change in Ireland will be driven by exceptional people with exceptional ideas. It has developed a support model that helps these social entrepreneurs grow their ideas from concept to reality and has, to date, committed in excess of €2.1 million in direct funding.

For more information visit www.socialentrepreneurs.ie. Applications for next year’s awards will be open in early 2008.