Her Majesty The Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, accompanied by Prince Harry, hosted a special ceremony in the Ballroom at Buckingham Palace to present medals to the 60 winners of The Queen's Young Leaders Awards for 2016.
A visually challenged young man with a passion for education and a youth facilitator from Hyderabad are among the winners across the globe who were presented medals for their exemplary work by Queen Elizabeth at the Buckingham Palace.
The two Indians are Kartik Sawhney (21) and Neha Swain (28). Kartik is described as being passionate about universal access to education. Although he was born blind, he excelled in science and technology at school. However, he discovered that blind students were prevented from pursuing science after Class 10.
After appealing, Kartik enrolled as India’s first Class 11 blind science student. He faced similar challenges when trying to enter engineering colleges, so in 2013 he took up a scholarship at Stanford University.
He founded Project STEMAccess, which offers hands-on science workshops in India, as well as virtual training sessions. He is working on a portal that will allow students to convert textbooks into their desired accessible format.
Neha has worked as a youth facilitator for five years. Two years ago, she co-founded an NGO called Rubaroo, which aims to provide an inclusive space for young people, irrespective of their socio-economic background to develop their leadership skills through interactive workshops.
The team provides workshops in schools which cannot afford such programmes free of charge. It has so far worked with nearly 2,000 young people in Hyderabad.
The Queen’s Young Leaders Award is a prestigious Commonwealth project which recognises and celebrates exceptional young people from across the Commonwealth who are taking the lead in their communities and using their skills to transform lives.
Winners from 45 countries across the Commonwealth traveled to London to receive their Queen's Young Leaders Award and participate in a week long residential programme which included visits to 10 Downing Street, the UK headquarters of Twitter and the BBC World Service. This year's winners, aged between 18 and 29, are working on a range of issues which includes education, climate change, gender equality, mental health and improving the lives of people with disabilities.
Launched in 2014 by The Duke of Cambridge and Prince Harry, the first round of Queen's Young Leaders visited the United Kingdom in 2015. Each year from 2014 to 2018, 60 exceptional young people will be selected to receive a Queen’s Young Leaders Award and become ‘Queen’s Young Leaders’ – one for every year that The Queen had served as Head of the Commonwealth at the time of her Diamond Jubilee.
The Programme aims to discover, celebrate and support young people from every Commonwealth nation. The goal is to enable young people to take up leadership roles and improve the lives of people across the Commonwealth.
