Hannah Chowdhry

On International day of friendship why not speak out for oppressed or bullied people in your communities?  Here I was speaking at Westminster Cathedral highlighting the persecution of Christians in Pakistan. Many of you will never have heard of the International day of Friendship, which is the very reason I write this blog. The special day was devised by UNESCO and ratified by the UN at their General Assembly in 1997, yet since then the day has been celebrated little. The day itself has some very inspirational objectives and I list their 8 areas of action which they promote to nations, organisations and individuals to foster global peace: foster a culture of peace through education promote sustainable economic and social development promote respect for all human rights ensure equality between women and men foster democratic participation advance understanding, tolerance and solidarity support participatory communication and the free flow of information and knowledge p

As young people in this modern world we are all very well aware of the power of the internet. As a campaigner for groups like the East Ilford Betterment Partnership and the British Paksitani Christian Association I myself have had to use social media to promote our work, and without social media we would fail to reach the global audience who have come to read the material we produce. However, in the same way that the internet and especially social media can be used for good of course those who intend to use it for more evil purposes have the same access as those who choose to use it for good. These sites do not discriminate and their policing of content pushed out by users is poor at best and slow to react meaning that fraud and exploitation is rife. There are many social media that people use and though Facebook is still the most popular especially in 20 - 40 year olds, others like twitter, Instagram, whatsapp and snapchat all have large segments of the market and this list is n

I felt very privileged when I was presented with a Diana Award on 15th July 2019.  The event was very lavish and was held at the Welsh Assembly (I had to miss the London Ceremony due to being on the Duke of Edinburgh Award Silver Expedition) which I had never visited before. The Welsh Assembly building was extremely modern and their main foyer was all glass which created quite a spectacle.  Before the glass you have a picturesque view of the River Taff which is a popular tourist location with many amenities and after my ceremony I was was able to take a walk around and even had a meal at my favourite restaurant chain Wagamamas. The ceremony was swift and efficient, photos were taken expediently and the event team described what families should do i.e when to stay quiet and when to cheer, prior to the presentations.  The team also kept the biographies succint which actually made the whole event more palatable than others I have been to. My certificate was presented to me by HM

Hi it's been some time since I wrote a blog but I thought I would share my recent experiences whilst going through my Silver Award Expedition for the Duke of Edinburgh Awards. This year it was really difficult as I was suffering from extreme pain throughout and had to resort to using painkillers and masses of antihistimine to cope with my severe hayfever too. So as you can imagine I was lucid one moment and groggy the next. Worse still on the first day of my expedition my sisters had been playing with my walking boots so I had to borrow my mothers, which was one size to small and caused me no end of pain for the first day.  Even though my father dropped my pair of boots at 11:30pm to one of the kind instructors it made little difference for the following two days as I had already formed blisters from the tight boots on the first day.  It was a really woeful start... I was the only girl on a group of 7 and though it seemed intimidating at first I honestly believe I was w