It’s been a long year, but we want to celebrate the start of the giving season by reflecting on our proudest achievements of the past 12 months. As a team and community we’ve responded to a changing world and embraced the challenge to adapt our offering for the communities that we serve. Take a look at how we made it happen below.
We know this December and holiday season may be very different from the usual. This year has been a difficult one for us all. The charity sector has been hit particularly hard, with many facing funding gaps as grants and individual donations dried up in the midst of the pandemic.
Thanks to our supporters, fundraisers, and partners, we have been able to continue in our mission to foster and inspire positive change in the lives of young people by adapting our three key programmes to remain accessible to those that benefit from our work.
Having prevailed despite the odds, we want to come together at the end of 2020 to reflect on the positives from this year. Join us as we look back on a few key moments where overcame challenges, realised ideas, and achieved incredible things.
Here’s our take on ‘How It Started vs. How It’s Going’ from the past year…
Yes, we miss being in schools. But we’ve persisted in our mission, empowering young people to be at the forefront of creating change in their schools by taking our peer-to-peer training online. We’ve also released a new series of pre-recorded videos for our Anti-Bullying Ambassadors to use in their schools and their school staff have pledged to share them with over 14,000 young people.
Every November, we celebrate Anti-Bullying Week with schools across the UK. Our exciting 2019 events reached 700 young people, teachers, and staff at events in Blackpool and London. In the face of challenge, Anti-Bullying Week 2020 engaged over 200,000 young people in four celebrity-led creative workshops, and a surprise video call for some of our National Youth Board members with an old friend, HRH Prince William.
Last year, we supported students in September by taking a group of famous faces #Back2School to reflect and share their experiences of bullying at school. This year, we delivered The Big Anti-Bullying Assembly with Nationwide Building Society to kick off a three-year partnership that will see us work together to train over 10,000 young people as Anti-Bullying Ambassadors in primary schools across the UK. The Assembly reached over two million pupils, plus educators and school staff from all over of the UK as we came together virtually to pledge to put an end to bullying.
To celebrate our 2019 Diana Award recipients, last year we hosted three Diana Award ceremonies with 560 attendees in iconic venues in Belfast, Cardiff, Edinburgh and London. We love and cherish our in-person events, but must admit, we really outdid ourselves on this one: our virtual 2020 Diana Award Ceremony received no less than 3000+ Eventbrite registrations and 28k YouTube views bringing together our changemakers across the globe with Prince Harry making a special address.
In 2019, we welcomed Diana Award recipients from 26 new countries; it was a big year for the Awards, with our Change Maker Campaign and Legacy Award Ceremony. In 2020 we reached another 12 new countries and are proud to say we have awarded changemakers in 70 countries worldwide!
We can’t host our Award Alumni networking events in our London offices, but we won’t stop elevating young changemakers and enabling them to drive positive change across the world. In the past few months, we moved our Conversations for Change events online, engaging young activists and humanitarians from all over the globe.
The Diana Award’s Mentoring Programme operates in London, Birmingham, Leeds, and Jersey, supporting vulnerable pre-GCSE teens who have inevitably been greatly affected by the current situation in a number of ways. Our Mentoring Programme aims to build character and resilience, instil active citizenship, improve post-secondary work readiness, and break down barriers to social mobility. Our Mentoring facilitators (like Latoya pictured) have gone from in person training to virtual!
When some doors close, others open. Hosting the UK’s first National Youth Mentoring Summit was an important achievement in 2019. It’s vital that we continue these conversations. Our mentoring project One Hour, One Young Person, One Parliamentarian was a result of harnessing the power of Zoom! We partnered 100 Parliamentarians with young people to facilitate thoughtful and critical conversations about issues impacting their communities for this year’s National Mentoring Day celebration.
And finally, talk about a glow up!
We couldn’t be more proud of our CEO Tessy Ojo CBE, for receiving an honour in this year’s Queens Birthday Honours, in recognition of her lifelong commitment to empowering and supporting children and young people. You can read more about the news here.
As we look back on the year, it’s hard not to feel proud of what we’ve achieved. And with your support, we can do even more. On this Giving Tuesday, a day of global giving, you have the power to help us continue the legacy of Princess Diana and empower young people to change the world.
1. Make a donation: Make a one time or regular donation to The Diana Award and help us reach even more young people through our Anti-Bullying, Award and Mentoring programmes. By donating even just the cost of one morning coffee, you can make a difference.
2. Fundraise for us: Every penny makes a difference and helps to support our mission of enabling young people to change the world. Not sure how to get started?
3. Become an #XmasPartyHero: Make a charitable donation then download the ready-made gift card and give that to your company Secret Santa this Christmas.
4. Birthday Fundraiser: Facebook is an easy way to share with your family and friends, but birthday fundraisers don’t have to be limited to the platform. Organise a birthday party on a platform like Zoom to celebrate and collect donations.
5. Shop our online store: Show your support by grabbing one of our brand-new tees, sweatshirts, or hoodies, or any of our merchandise on the store. You can even turn online shopping from Sainsbury’s, Amazon, M&S, Argos, John Lewis, and more, into free donations and get a £5 bonus when you sign up with easyfundraising! When you shop this way, retailers will make a small donation to us to say “thank you”.
International Women’s Day, taking place annually on 8 March, is a global day celebrating the social, economic, cultural, and political achievements of women. This year, we asked 2020 Diana Award recipient Ananya Jain to reflect on their journey as an Indian woman who immigrated to the US, and what this year’s International Women’s Day theme of ‘Invest in Women, Accelerate Progress’, means to them.
The International Day of Women and Girls in Science, taking place annually on 11 February, celebrates women's impactful contributions to science while emphasising the need to encourage girls to pursue careers in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (S.T.E.M.).
Oluwatomi Olunuga received her Diana Award in 2023 for her significant contributions to the fight against Female Genital Mutilation in Nigeria. In observance of the International Day of Zero Tolerance to Female Genital Mutilation, we asked her to share her thoughts and work, giving us all actions that we can take locally in the fight against FGM.
