WOHAA 2024/25 Semi-Finalists Present at the House of Lords
On Thursday 26th June, our WOHAA 2024/25 Semi-Finalist teams had the prestigious opportunity to present their WOHAA journeys at the House of Lords, in front of an esteemed panel of judges.
The event marked a proud moment for the charity, as students showcased their WOHAA journeys, highlighting months of creative fundraising, teamwork, and community engagement. Their presentations were confident, purposeful, and reflected a deep understanding of the Wings of Hope’s mission to support education for underprivileged children in India and Malawi.
This year’s judging panel was led by a distinguished group of professionals from across politics, business, media, academia, and the arts.
Judges included:
- Lord Bhikhu Parekh, Political Theorist and Member of the House of Lords;
- Lord Ed Vaizey, former Minister for Culture & Digital;
- Dr. Swati Dhingra, Economist and External Member of the Monetary Policy Committee, Bank of England;
- Professor Tim Mawson, Fellow in Philosophy at the University of Oxford;
- Lydia Slater, Editor-in-Chief of Harper’s Bazaar;
- Dawn Butler MP, Politician and Equality Advocate,
- Oliver Lam-Watson, Paralympic Medalist and Disability Advocate,
- Kapila Ireland, Editor of DFNI-Frontier;
- Barbara Campos, CEO of JOSEPH,
- Jemma Tadd, Head of Fashion at eBay UK,
- Kirsty Keoghan, Senior Director of European Fashion at eBay,
- Manju Malhi BEM DL, Chef, Author and Broadcaster,
- Eve Fifer, Commercial Director at AVOLTA
- Dr R. Sri Ram and Rajni Sri Ram, Co-Founders of The Wings of Hope, were also in attendance in an observing capacity.
“Getting to this stage is a huge achievement for all our students – a testament to their resilience, drive and mission to support education globally for those less fortunate. The skills learnt by the students and the creative projects we saw, were just so heartening.”
– Rajni Sri Ram, CEO and Co-Founder The Wings of Hope.
Fundraising projects included events to mark our 20th year of WOHAA, a marathon on a horse, teacher head shaves, sponsoring a teacher to get a student-designed tattoo, visiting 101 London Landmarks, marathons, ice-cream sales, concerts, soap-making, hand cream making, Iftar events, Sip and Paint night, teacher quiz nights…the list goes on!
Skills Learnt
The students recount the journeys they have been on and talk of the many skills they learn outside of a classroom environment; from organisational, teamwork, learning how to solve problems, work for and learning more about their local community, entrepreneurship, communication, creativity and beyond.
Community projects
This year, we noted more and more students becoming passionate about their local communities and wanting to do multiple community action projects. These included: litter picking, volunteering at local care homes, tuition clubs, planting, helping at food banks, cleaning local places of worship, helping out at school/local events, and more.
Awareness projects
All students worked hard to communicate the work of the Wings of Hope Children’s Charity, and the international projects in India and Malawi, through school assemblies, social media videos – some of which went viral, presentations to local community groups, and creating flyers, and going on supervised door-to-door charity walks.
Schools represented
Some of the schools represented by the students of the Semi-Finals include: Mount House School, Queen Elizabeth Boys’ School, Newstead Wood School, The Malling School, Kingsmead School, The Royal Masonic School for Girls, Oasis Hadley Academy and more.
We are so excited to celebrate all of our students’ efforts at our WOHAA 2024/25 Final Awards Ceremony on Saturday 5th July.
