Her Majesty will host the 2017 Queen’s Young Leaders Awards Ceremony
Thursday 29th June 2017
Her Majesty The Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, accompanied by Prince Harry, will host a ceremony and reception at Buckingham Palace to present Awards to The Queen’s Young Leaders for 2017.
Among the guests will be the Chairman of The Queen Elizabeth Diamond Jubilee Trust, Sir John Major, Dame Tanni Grey-Thompson, Sir Mo Farah and Caspar Lee.
The Queen’s Young Leaders Programme celebrates the achievements of inspiring young people from across the Commonwealth who are dedicated to driving change in their communities. The Queen was 26 years old when she became Head of the Commonwealth in 1952. This five year programme was launched in 2014 in honour of Her Majesty’s lifetime of service to the Commonwealth – a global network of 52 countries and 2.2 billion people, of whom 60 % are under 30 years old.
This year’s winners, aged between 18 and 29, are working in support of a range of issues from tackling bullying in schools, to preserving the environment, to promoting gender equality. In the week leading up to the Awards Ceremony, the winners will travel to the UK from across 36 Commonwealth countries to participate in a programme of training, mentoring and networking opportunities. This includes workshops at the University of Cambridge and visits to No 10, the UK headquarters of Facebook and the BBC World Service.
The BBC’s The One Show will broadcast live from Buckingham Palace during the reception that evening. The Awards ceremony will be broadcast on Facebook Live, bringing the winners’ families from around the Commonwealth inside Buckingham Palace.
Following the reception, Prince Harry will attend the Awards Dinner at Australia House where the search for the final cohort of Queen’s Young Leaders will be launched.
The Queen’s Young Leaders Programme and the Awards
The Queen’s Young Leaders Award is part of The Queen’s Young Leaders Programme, an initiative established by The Queen Elizabeth Diamond Jubilee Trust in partnership with Comic Relief, the Royal Commonwealth Society and the University of Cambridge, in recognition of Her Majesty’s lifetime of service to the Commonwealth.
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. It will do this both through an award scheme and giving grants to support organisations in select countries in the Commonwealth that are working with young people to transform their lives. These young people are chosen for having transformed their own lives and the lives of those around them, despite challenges they may have faced along the way. The goal of the Programme is to enable young people to take up leadership roles and improve the lives of people across the Commonwealth.
More information about The Queen’s Young Leaders Programme and the Awards is available via the following link: http://www.queensyoungleaders.com/
