Alumni Dinner and Award Ceremony

The ParliaMentors Alumni Committee organised the dinner at the beautiful Norton Rose Fulbright suite to whom a massive thank you must go for being excellent hosts.  

Charly Burridge Jones, member of the alumni committee, and Phil Champain, the director of 3FF, opened the event and described the exciting developments for the alumni, the 10^th anniversary of ParliaMentors, the upcoming interfaith summit and 3FF’s 20^th anniversary plans.  After dinner the new members of the committee were introduced, and we would like to give a very warm welcome to the newcomers Juhi Verma, Masarat Daud, Keerti Rajagopalan, Grace Louisey, Lara Kaplan, Aqeelah Malek and Mamataj Begum. 

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Alumni Buddy Award

The first award recognised truly dedicated Alumni Buddies.

The Alumni Buddying scheme matches ParliaMentors with alumni who can give them advice and help them reflect on how their project is proceeding, how they are developing personally and how they can achieve some of their wider aspirations. Over the first two years ParliaMentors and Alumni have both benefited from forming relationships with other emerging leaders with shared passions and interests. Alumni have been able to refine the important skill of coaching someone to come to a good decision without being told the answer, have of course been given first priority when it comes to tickets to APPGs and other events, and had an active stake in the great work done by the ParliaMentors each year.

In the last two years the relationships formed and maintained by four buddies have stood out because of the wisdom they have imparted and consistent support they have given. Amy Williams, Aziz Din, Joe Taylor and Ali Torabi were nominated.

The winner of the 2016 Alumni Buddy Award was Aziz Din! The award was presented by Aziz Din’s buddy Hamza Patel.

Outstanding Community Impact Award 

The second award of the evening was “Outstanding Community Impact”. The four people shortlisted for the Outstanding community impact award were:

Carolin Albrecht works at the Global Poverty Project which seeks to eradicate extreme poverty by 2030, in particular she recently organised the #shewill campaign which was supported by MPs from the Department for International Development and Justine Greening pledged £100 million of investment to ensure girls around the world have access to education.

Soleha Khawar has been running her own charity, Streethands, to support victims of domestic violence around London, this has involved a range of activities from workshops and soup kitchens to finding legal representation. The success of Streethands has been partly down to the involvement of different faiths donating resources and their time. Soleha has managed to do all of this while also working a full time job.

Caroline Sculley works in South Africa for a charity called WhizzKids United, delivering effective HIV prevention, care, treatment and support to young people, and running educational programmes for children whose families, or who personally have been affected by the virus.

Constantin Gouvy has worked for Human Rights Watch in Geneva and then continued to work to help refugees and document their struggles with local NGOs l’Auberge des Migrants, Care4Calais and Oikopolis in France and Greece.

Congratulations to the winner Soleha Khawar! To learn more about Streethands go to the streethands website

Outstanding Political Contribution Award

The third award of the night was dedicated to “Outstanding Political Contribution”, in which alumni active in achieving change through politics were recognized. These were the nominated:

Edita Osipovaite has taken the rank and is now a diplomat for Lithuania, working in Brussels. She has worked in a number of areas and is currently part of the permanent representation to the European Union on trade, negotiations, and market access.

Cllr Tamoor Tariq was elected councillor a few years ago and has gone on to become the youngest member of his council’s cabinet. He has a specific remit of working with faith organisations and voluntary groups in Bury. He has also been working on the campaign for Mayor of Manchester.

Amy Longland organised training for volunteers and the network of campaigners in the Midlands to canvas voters and engage members of the community to become passionate about the referendum and turn out to vote.

We were pleased to be able to give the Outstanding Political Contribution Award to Amy Longland, who was able to join us by videolink to receive the award while researching for her dissertation!

Thank you to everyone responsible for making the Alumni Dinner 2016 possible. Please refer to our wonderful collection of photos from the evening here: https://goo.gl/Y3I1am 

By ParliaMentors Alumni Network