In front of a voting audience of more than 70 people, three finalists battled it out for a share of £6,000 in prize money at our ’60 Seconds For Good’ pitch competition at the VARC conference in Manchester UK.

Throughout the conference, attendees were invited to submit their high-impact ideas for transforming our food system through the Kickstarting For Good ‘Swipe My Idea’ platform – which has been described as the ‘dating app for ideas’ by allowing people to vote on submitted ideas by swiping left or right.

The top 14 ideas were invited to the stage for 60-seconds to explain why they deserved one of three cash prizes to help take their idea for change forwards, with the audience voting live on each pitch through the app. The winning three ideas then returned to the stage for an extra two-minutes to explain more about their idea and what they would do with the money, with the audience deciding the final winner.

The competition was won by Helen Maitland, who won £3,000 to develop her idea ‘From Sanctuary to Social Change’. The idea aims to strengthen the use of animal sanctuaries as a tool for dietary-change, equipping them with research-backed educational tools for children to better help them develop empathy for animals in the food system to create long-term social change.

The second prize of £2,000 was won by Kerri Waters with her idea ‘Executive Values’, which aims to encourage aligned people to take executive-level positions in food and farming organisations to push change faster and further. Third place with a £1000 prize went to ‘Persuasion Lab’ from Robert Udale, which will empower the movement using social science theory and research methods to design and field test attitude and behaviour change interventions. 

Each winning initiative also gets the opportunity to engage with Kickstarting For Good to further develop their ideas and apply for one of the places on our 2026 cohort.