Saima's Story

The skills Diana Award Holders develop when helping other people soon win them fresh, and often unexpected opportunities. When a group of pupils including Saima Tarapdar raised money for Comic Relief by organising a talent show, they soon found themselves advertising tickets, selecting acts, preparing the school hall and doing all the other tasks needed to organise a successful evening. What made their work even more remarkable was that no staff or parents were directly involved - in a school that had no history of students arranging events on such a scale.

Saima was presented with a Diana Award for her role, but as she said herself, she was soon able to "develop the skills I acquired to receive the Award in the first place" by establishing befriending schemes for isolated elderly people, working with an advocacy group called Tender to develop educational policy initiatives that help reduce violence against women, and also to work with the Young Researchers' Programme to investigate the plight of young carers in the UK.