WOHAA FAQs

WOHAA has five stages:

Stage 1: September-December

Assemblies/Presentations are carried out in schools.
Students register online (deadline is November 30th).

Stage 2: September-April

Fundraising begins as soon as teams have registered.
The WOHAA team will mentor students during this period and participants also have access to our jam-packed Resource Centre.

Stage 3: May

Students submit their Snapshots projects to us for assessment.

NB. Students in years 9-11 also have the option to submit their Snapshot projects at the end of January (please get in touch for further details)

All years

Stage 4: June

Teams are shortlisted to attend our Semi-Final at the House of Lords where they will present their projects in front of a panel of judges.

Stage 5: July

We hold our annual Award Ceremony, a night of fun, glitz and celebration for all participants, teachers and parents. The winners are announced during the evening and trophies are presented, with musical entertainment and special guests.

Winners of awards are offered work experience placements with some of our corporate partners. Once they win, they must be as flexible as possible to which work experience they are offered. They will be asked for their preferences, but placements also depend on the date availability of the firms and the winners.

Students usually start with small events such as bake sales, or car washes, and then move on to larger projects such as sponsored walks, or sports events. We encourage them to think big, and go for more impressive events towards the end of the programme, such as gala dinners, concerts, or talent shows. In the past we have seen a huge range of events, including:

• chili-eating contests,
• sponsored head-shaves,
• gala dinners,
• skydives,
• talent shows,
• non-stop 18 hour radio shows,
• game shows,
• sponsored 36 hour football matches,
• sponsored walks,
• fashion shows,
• auctions,
• music nights,
• busking,
• swim-a-thons,
• christmas sales and events.

Our Resource Centre has many more ideas to draw on – so get creative!

Projects are assessed on the basis of what events have been run, how they have been run, the quality of the Snapshot, how the team has grown along the way, how much they have raised, how active they were in promoting their events and many other aspects! We have an Award for all parts of WOHAA as it’s not about how much students raise, but how they do it.

The main categories of the competition are:

• • Most Entrepreneurial Team or Individual
  • Most Awareness Raised and Best Presentation
  • Community Action Award
  • Excellence in Sport/The Arts/Culinary/Technology (as part of the project)
  • Most Funds Raised
  • Overall Winning Team or Individual

The top 20-25 teams will be invited to our Semi-Final event at the House of Lords, where each team will present their WOHAA project to a panel of distinguished judges, including top CEOs, actors, BBC journalists, and other WOHAA patrons.

We aim to ensure a good balance of schools are put forward to take part in our Semi-Finals.

Students’ Snapshot projects present their WOHAA journey, detailing their events, idea processes, struggles and successes. These are an important part of WOHAA and can be presented in any form the students choose: in the past we’ve received scrapbooks, PowerPoint presentations, video diaries, and many more. Students talk about their motivations for doing WOHAA, what they found challenging, how they worked as a team, including photographs, drawings, stickers and other representations of their events. Part of WOHAA is to encourage self-reflection so the Snapshot projects are a great way for students to express themselves and their individual journeys and reflect on what worked for them.

WOHAA is open to any student within the age range of 13-18.

In order to be able to continue our high quality of programme and expand this to as many students as possible, we have just two key guidelines for schools to be aware of:

• we require a minimum of two participating teams (teams can be formed of 1-6 students)
• over 13 years of fundraising, we have found that teams across all sectors of schools (independent, faith, international, academy, grammar, free, comprehensive) raised on average £500-600 per team.
  Therefore, we would be hoping for a total fundraising total of £1000 for all teams across one school
  (NB: this is a target figure, your school will not be required to make up the difference if there is a shortfall, and equally this is not a cap on your teams’ fundraising – many teams raise over £1000 each!)

These guidelines are to ensure we continue to provide our high quality service and to enable us to better manage our annual income predictions, so our projects around the world can continue to empower young people.

If you have any queries regarding the above, please get in touch with our team who will be happy to go over these.

Good news – WOHAA does not charge schools a participation fee.

Unlike other similar programmes, we are determined to maintain our ethos of empowerment for all, so your school can participate in WOHAA for free.

There is an admin charge per participant of £15 on registration. Some schools choose to cover this for their students. This charge is to cover our costs and make sure that as much fundraising as possible can go towards helping students around the world access free education.

Absolutely!

You can either bring them in a group as a school trip, or promote it within your school. Any WOHAA students can come for free, and non-WOHAA students must pay £10. Schools vary in how they want to pay for this.

We would strongly encourage your WOHAA students to attend, as they get extra points for their project if they do, as well as tailored careers advice from top professionals and students from the prestigious London Business School.

Whether students run their WOHAA projects in or out of school time depends completely on the students, and on what your school will allow. A reasonable balance of both often works best. Ultimately, we want the students who take part to learn project management skills, by learning to manage their time, and balance WOHAA with their school work. Therefore WOHAA should never interfere with lessons and requires no dedicated curriculum time to be set aside.

Examples of in-school events might include:

– Bake sales over lunch time

– Selling of wristbands in a 6th form common room or shared area

– A school concert that the students have planned themselves and worked out arrangements for use of a school venue with the appropriate teachers

Examples of out-of-school events might include:

– Sponsored sports events

– Flyer-ing/ busking in public places

– Work in their local community

– Charity galas/concerts or any other event for which the students have found and arranged a venue themselves.

The programme is adaptable, although we chiefly operate in 3 key ways:

1. Assemblies: Most often, we come in and introduce the programme to students in school assemblies or any suitable presentation slot. Students then sign up to the programme through the website.

2. Targeted Presentations: Some teachers prefer to advertise the programme internally first, and we can then come in to deliver a presentation to a smaller targeted group.

3. Careers / Enrichment Fairs: Some schools that put on enrichment fairs also like us to come in to have a stall as an option for students to sign up.

You can of course introduce the programme to your students yourself – please get in touch to arrange for supporting materials and how to do this.