Beanstalk has been announced as a finalist in the inaugural Worshipful Company of Information Technologists' Charity (WCIT) IT Award. The WCIT Charity is offering its first ever Charity IT Award of £750,000 as they see technology as a force for good. The award will be presented to the project that champions the transformative power of IT to help charities have a bigger impact on people’s lives, this will benefit young people's education or those contending with disadvantage, disability or social exclusion.

175,000 children leave primary school every year without basic literacy skills. These children risk growing up to face a lifetime of social exclusion, unemployment and disadvantage. Beanstalk reaches 11,000 children every year with one to one reading support, however, we want to reach 30,000 children by 2021. In order to help us achieve this ambitious goal, we applied for the Worshipful Company of Information Technologists Charity Award to enable us to scale up our reach through digital innovation. This grant will support the scaling up of our remote one-to-one reading support sessions using Skype technology. This will enable us to reach children in the most remote communities of the country. It will also enable us to develop an online platform that will use the best quality resources and integrated impact measurement to ensure that the children we work with are getting the most out of the intervention.

'We are really excited to have been shortlisted for the WCIT Charity IT Award, which would support the digital transformation of our small but growing charity.' Ginny Lunn, CEO, Beanstalk explains 'Beanstalk provides one-to-one reading support to children across England and with this award to invest in digital, we would be able to increase our reach to more children in need as well as improve our impact.'.

Beanstalk is a finalist alongside charities WhizzKids, Campaign Against Living Miserably, Missing People and the Brain Tumour Charity. To find out more, please visit the WCIT website http://wcitcharity.org.uk/finalists/