Two social enterprises supporting disadvantaged young people will be able to help rebuild more lives after winning the inaugural Social Entrepreneur Awards launched by Bank of Scotland Corporate and supported by the Sunday Times.

Skye-based charity Columba 1400 won £500,000, while Stockton on Tees charity A Way Out won a donation of £100,000. The two enterprises beat off stiff competition to clinch the awards at the ceremony held in Christ Church, Spitalfields last week.

The charities were singled out for the awards by a panel of judges that included philanthropist Kavita Oberoi and Liam Black, a social entrepreneur who helped to expand Jamie Oliver’s Fifteen restaurant chain – which employs youngsters from disadvantaged backgrounds – into a global brand.

Columba 1400, which provides leadership development experiences for young people in Scotland who have faced homelessness, addiction, poverty and growing up within the care system, will use the £500,000 prize money to open a new centre in Loch Lomond.

“This is about broadening our impact in Scotland, the UK and beyond. It will transform our organisation allowing us to take all our plans forward fast rather than doing it all incrementally, " Anne Wexelstein, the charity's programme director said.

“We are going to be able to work with so many more young people who society has written off. We help them to realise they are worthwhile members of society. If you're a young person who has grown up in residential care it can make all the difference having someone really listen to you and treat you as an equal, not just as a case file.”

Three quarters of the young people who attend the centre’s leadership course move into education or work, compared with 39 per cent of their peer group.

Jessie Joe Jacobs, founder of A Way Out, said she would spend the money on expanding through franchising the organisation to run in new locations all over the UK.

Jacobs founded the charity while growing up in Stockton-on-Tees and witnessing first-hand the impact that drugs and poverty had on young people. While studying for a masters degree in management at Durham University, she decided to try applying business practices to the problem and in 2002 co-founded A Way Out, providing a local club and activities for unoccupied youngsters.

Today the charity has 14 full and part-time employees and 20 volunteers. This year it moved into a new centre and more than 50 children a night attend the project’s evening youth clubs.

Jacobs said demonstrating a strong business plan was key to A Way Out’s victory. “I think we managed to make the judges see this was an entrepreneurial business with a clear idea of where it wants to go. With the right support and finance there’s nowhere we can't go now.”

Kavita Oberoi, founder of IT services business Oberoi Consulting and participant in Channel Four's Secret Millionaire, said both winners had demonstrated sound business plans. “Columba 1400 had clear ideas about their growth plans but they also had contingency plans in place for a downturn. They had a back up to keep them sustainable.”

Of A Way Out, Oberoi said: “They showed clear strategic direction and they were very clear about who they are delivering to. They really know their customers and that's what you need in any business.”

The other finalists were the Bright Ideas Trust, Abs Kids, The Gladiator Programme and the Maggie Keswick Jencks Cancer Caring Centres Trust.