It didn’t have the budget of a Hollywood block buster but a film focusing on a small west Dorset charity is hoping to scoop its own kind of ‘Oscar’.

Earlier this year TheHorseCourse, based in Weymouth, in Dorset in 2010, won the national FSI Small Charity Big Impact Award, fighting off competition from hundreds of other small charities.

As part of the prize the charity, which uses horses to help improve the lives of the most disadvantaged people in society, got the services of film director Dale Whiteman of Good Egg Media to produce a short film explaining what the charity does.

That film is now up for the Charity Film Awards 2017 – and it could win if enough people vote for it.

CEO Harriet Laurie, who started TheHorseCourse in 2010, said: “We have a wealth of data from university studies to show that what we do works but people need to see and feel the human story too. We felt that a video where people can see and hear about what we do would be a powerful communication tool.

“We need to get our message across to get funders, referrers and the community to support the work we do.

“We work from the belief that anxiety is not a disease, it is the absence of a skill called calmness; a skill that can and should be taught.

“Dale Wightman of Good Egg Media did an am amazing job of capturing the essence of what we do in a way that words never can.

“By voting for our film the public can help spread our message to that we can help people when all else has failed and hopefully the more people that see the film and vote for it the more people will be motivated to donate to our charity.

Voting is free and open until December 15. Votes can be made at www.charityfilmawards.com/videos/thehorsecourse

The Charity Film Awards celebrate the third sector’s use of film, whether to raise awareness for the charity, fundraise or change mindsets.

All the films entered will go into a public voting stage, where fans are encouraged to vote on their favourite charity video to go through to the shortlist. The shortlist is then reviewed by the judges, whittling them down to the finalists, who will attend a gloamorous awards ceremony.

Jo Tyler, co-founder of the Charity Film Awards, said: “The third sector are beginning to embrace the use of film, whether to tell their story or motivate a behavioural change in others. The Charity Film Awards celebrate the effectiveness and creativeness of these films. We’ve had hundreds of fantastic videos entered already more.”