Diana Legacy Award_Nov 2019

8Dec 2

Diana Legacy Award_Nov 2019

On November 26th, 2019, I received the Diana Legacy Award from Earl Spencer, the brother of Princess Diana. I was fortunate enough to be selected along with 19 other young people from around the globe to receive this prestigious award.

The Diana Award is a youth charity established in memory of Princess Diana and her belief that young people have the power to change the world. The charity is supported by The Duke of Cambridge and The Duke of Sussex and this year is its 20th anniversary.

We were invited by the Diana Award team to attend a 4-day residential based at the Tower Hotel, which overlooks London’s St Katherine’s Dock. Over each of the four days, we headed out from the hotel to various activities, networking events & experiences around London. The aim of this was to develop useful skills and ideas which we could use to continue bringing about positive change through our various projects and initiatives. We covered lots of different themes and topics including body positivity, presenting ourselves professionally, how to run a successful campaign, how to map out and deconstruct our personal “brand” and how to use a social platform such as Instagram to tell our story and spread our message.

On one particular one morning, we had a working breakfast with the Legacy Award’s main sponsor, Gilead Sciences and had a session on ‘Conversations for Change’ and how to promote good mental health and wellbeing. We were treated to an incredible early -Thanksgiving meal and attended dinner engagements where we met with some of the Legacy Award Judges and executives from HSBC.

Another high point was meeting the 2017 Legacy Award Recipients. They joined us to share their stories and experiences. I was happy to see my friend Femi among them.

We were really well looked after by the Diana Award team, they were always warm & friendly, as they chaperoned us to various locations, including Canary Warth, John Lewis, West End’s Apollo Theatre, HSBC HeadQuarters, JKR Global and Gilead Sciences HQ.

We got to see Everybody’s Talking About Jamie, it had a strong message about acceptance and embracing diversity, which is something that Princess Diana championed.

As you can imagine, we were very busy each day but it was fun and we got to meet loads of people that were genuinely interested in, and supportive of our work. I particularly enjoyed talking with Baroness Lawrence, she was very warm and gave me a lot of extra encouragement.

We even had tea with Prince William at Kensington Palace where I discussed my Girls Into Coding project. I founded Girls Into Coding to encourage more girl involvement in tech. My events are free to attend and offer girls aged 10-14 an opportunity to explore coding, physical computing & robotics in a secure, dynamic and supportive environment. The Girls are gifted with a microcontroller, a physical computing starter kit and books to continue their tech journey at home and beyond.

One of my goals is to be able to reach even more girls through my girls into Coding events, I want to be able to provide at least one event every month. Attending the Diana Legacy experience and award ceremony has given me that extra belief that I can make this happen and also confirmed that there are other people and groups out there that can help make this become a reality.

The Actual award ceremony took place at the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich in the fascinating Painted Hall. It was a very impressive venue and made the whole occasion extra special. I was seated at a large round table with my family and other guests including Baroness Lawrence and Roya Nikkhah from the Sunday Times.

It’s quite a humbling experience to know that the work I do is valued. Receiving the Legacy Award has further motivated me to strive for positive change and it will help to highlight my mission to engage more girls with STEM opportunities – and ultimately get more support from the wider community.

I really had an amazing 4 days with The DianaAward Team and the other Legacy recipients networking and developing our skills

I want to give a special thanks to Tessy Ojo and her fantastic team, the judges, sponsors and last but not least the Legacy Award recipients! Each recipient’s story & mission was shared right before being presented with the individual awards on stage and really showed why everyone’s efforts and achievements were being recognised. You can read about their stories here: https://diana-award.org.uk/2019-legacy-award/

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Diana Legacy Award_Nov 2019