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Winners of Abbey 1-UCL Excellence/Endeavour Awards

24 September 2007

The ten winners of the inaugural Abbey 1-UCL Excellence/Endeavour Awards have been announced.

Taniya Sharmeen

The awards aim to foster the notion of UCL as a community, and to recognise outstanding achievement or endeavour by current UCL students in a non-academic field.

The winners are drawn from the undergraduate and postgraduate community, and span a range of UCL faculties. They are:

  • Khurshida Begum, Kesson Magid and Taniya Sharmeen (UCL Anthropology) for providing health and educational support to the Bangladeshi community in King's Cross, Camden and East London
  • Ed Casswell, Jeremy Hoffman, Adiele Hughes, Bev Kugler, Ben Marlow, Shabnam Spiers, Audrey Ker Shin Soo, Annie Wong and Lauren Young (all UCL Medicine) for Spectrum, a charity run by UCL medical students that supports children with a range of disabilities aged 3 to 17 within the Borough of Camden
  • Rachael Hazael (UCL Earth Sciences) for her work on the UCL Student Ambassador Scheme, the UCAS Outreach Programme and the UCL European Social Fund Summer School

  • Clare Fernandes (UCL Medicine) for achievements in dance, choreography, hockey, organising charity events and teaching science to primary schoolchildren
  • Zeynap Kurban (UCL Physics & Astronomy) for being chair of the Student Commission of the Kurdish and Turkish Youth Parliament that works to tackle the under-achievement of Turkish, Kurdish and Cypriot secondary school students
  • Oscar Leonard (UCL Medicine) for raising funds for Medecins Sans Frontières and raising awareness among students about medical careers in non-governmental organisations
  • Leanna Lopez (UCL Psychology) for being a student mentor, president of the Urban Music Society, an active member of the African Caribbean Society, and contributor to local community dance and youth work
  • Rakhim Mirzayev (UCL School of Slavonic & East European Studies) for mentoring UCL first years through the university Transition Programme, acting as a Student Ambassador and working on the UCAS Outreach Programme
  • Chris Monk (UCL Economics) for his responsibility within LINKS, the student arm of St John Ambulance, which provides first aid and ambulance support to events in UCL and across London
  • Stephanie Wilmore and Rosie Crane (UCL Medicine) for raising funds and awareness about malaria and researching factors influencing death from the disease in Kenya

All the winners have been recognised for a commitment to extra-curricular activities that has gone beyond the call of duty, often carried out over several years and mostly with a direct impact on UCL's local community. 

The students' status as role models, and their responsibility and determination to fit their voluntary work around academic commitments were repeatedly cited in the nominations.

The winners will each receive an award of £1,000 for the charity of their choice, as well as £100 for their own use.

Many of the students chose charities with which they had worked to receive the award funds. They include the Akamba Aid Fund; the Bangladeshi Women's Health Project; Cancer Research UK; Heyva Sor A Kurdistane; Joni and Friends International Disability Center; Medecins Sans Frontières; Mencap and Spectrum.

The awards are an element of the agreement that UCL signed with Abbey in March 2007.

Images: Taniya Sharmeen, Kesson Magid, Rachael Hazael and Rakhim Mirzayev, along with the other winners, will receive £1,000 for a charity of their choice

Context
UCL forged an agreement with Abbey in March 2007, through which the financial group will provide the university with international scholarships, extra-curricular awards, assistance in networking and project cooperation, and support in introducing smart card technology.

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