WOHAA 2024/25 Semi-Finalists Present at Central Hall Westminster
On Tuesday 16th June, our WOHAA 2025/26 Semi-Finalist teams had the prestigious opportunity to present their WOHAA journeys at Central Hall Westminster, 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 Sierra Leone.
This year’s judging panel was led by a distinguished group of professionals from across politics, business, media, academia, and the arts. Judges included:
Judges included:
The Rt Hon. The Lord McNally – former Leader of the Liberal Party;
Dr. Ros Lynch, Deputy Director, Department for Business and Trade;
Divia Thani, Global Editorial Director, Condé Nast Traveller;
Barbara Campos, Chief Executive Officer, JOSEPH;
Jemma Tadd, Head of Fashion, eBay UK;
- Dawn Butler MP, Politician and Equality Advocate,
Kirsty Keoghan, Senior Director of European Fashion, eBay UK;
Prakriti Sofat, Associate, Asset Management at Goldman Sachs;
Dr Valerie Vaughan-Dick MBE, Chief Executive, RIBA;
Dougal Shaw, Senior Correspondent at Business Leader and Business Journalist;
- Kirsty Keoghan, Senior Director of European Fashion at eBay,
- 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 pie the teacher in the face, disco nights, poetry competitions, Iftar events, walking to the indian and sierra leonen embassy…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, volunteering at a refugee buddy club 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 Sierra Leone, 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
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, Dr Challoner’s Grammar School and more.
