A very happy and productive New Year to all our students and charities. Just a reminder that the final seminar will be taking place over the next two weeks – this will cover putting your mulitmedia presentation together – so please ensure you are around for that.

Each school will be scheduling their in-school heat which will give you a firm deadline to work with but don’t leave it to the last minute! Make sure you give yourselves plenty of time to practise – the more familiar you are with the presentation, the easier it will be! See you soon.

We know that many of you have been busy advocating for your charities in the run up to Christmas – we hope you have had fun and also managed to raise awareness of the issues your charity is trying to alleviate and the great work that they are doing to help people affected.

As a little Christmas bonus, we are happy to confirm that, thanks to a generous donation from the Elizabeth Clucas Charitable Trust and a few smaller individual contributions, we now have our prize fund secured. This means you are competing not only for the honour of winning the Charity Challenge title and trophy but also to win cash prizes for your charities. More details on this at the seminar in the New Year!

We are grateful to the trustees of the Elizabeth Clucas Charitable Trust for recognising the value of the Charity Challenge programme and supporting our student teams in this way.

In the meantime, we hope all our students and charity partners have a lovely Christmas break and look forward to catching up with everyone again in January.

All teams should now have their charity confirmed and all schools have had the first seminar about researching and the judging criteria (apart from QE2 where we’ll be visiting on Wednesday). It might seem like you have months and months to pull your research together, undertake some advocacy and start on your presentation but, trust us, time will fly by! If you haven’t done so already, start the conversation with your charity now and start planning who is going to do what amongst your team. Good luck!

We are delighted to be able to offer another programme of One World Charity Challenge to Year 12 students in the Isle of Man. This is your chance to find out more about some of the challenges faced by others, particularly in developing countries and disadvantaged communities – and how small charities are working hard to make a difference for these people.

We are currently launching the programme in schools (so look out for us if you’ve not yet had our presentation). This will be followed by our Meet the Charities Day event where you will have an opportunity to find our more about the charities you can choose to support.

This will take place on Thursday 26th September and your school will arrange for you to attend at a certain time during the day. We look forward to seeing you then but, in the meantime, if you have any questions please email us or ask your link teacher at school.

Let’s get going!

Congratulations to the team from Ballakermeen High School who were awarded first prize in this year’s One World Charity Challenge and a £1,500 donation to their charity Disability Africa. It was a fantastic finale to the competition with all six teams battling it out to win money for their charities – and it was a close contest, with the team from Castle Rushen High School coming in just a couple of points behind in second place but also picking up the AFD Award for Advocacy. The team from Ramsey Grammar School representing The Leprosy Mission picked up third place with a £750 donation and the teams from King William’s College representing The Virtual Doctors, QE2 High School representing Pump Aid and St Ninian’s High School representing Self Help Africa all won £500 for their charities in the runners up spots. Well done to everyone involved!

The tension is building! Good luck to all the teams taking part in tomorrow’s Grand Finals of the One World Charity Challenge. We had some fabulous rehearsals last week and everybody is ready to do their best for their chosen charities. Thank you, as ever, to AFD for providing the venue and technical help, and to all the supporters who have helped us with this programme in one way or another. Check back here on Wednesday for the results!!

So, now we have it, after three more in-school heats we now know all the teams going through to the grand finals. These are:

Ballakermeen – Disability Africa

Castle Rushen High School – Village Africa

King William’s College – The Virtual Doctors

QE2 High School – Pump Aid

Ramsey Grammar School – Leprosy Mission

St Ninian’s High School – Self Help Africa

Congratulations to all those who got through but also to every single team who took part – it’s been fantastic to find out about all the charities you have been representing and all the in-school presentations have been very enjoyable.

There is no let up for the winners now – they have just a few weeks more to hone their presentations in preparation for the grand final. Good luck everyone!

Congratulations to all the teams at King William’s College, Ballakermeen High School and Castle Rushen High School who have now participated in their in-school heats. There were some great presentations and some tricky decisions for the judges to make! Going through to the grand final are the following teams:

King Williams College – The Virtual Doctors

Ballakermeen High School – Disability Africa

Castle Rushen High School – Village Africa

The remaining schools have their in-school heats after half-term.

Regardless of whether they were selected to represent the school or not, all the teams gained some useful perspective on the world of charities and international development as well as the opportunity to practise some valuable skills such as teamwork, communication, public speaking and time-management. Well done to you all!

Welcome back to the new term! This is the time when you start to bring everything together and create your presentation. You may still be doing some advocacy work for your charity but it’s crucial you now start to plan and put into action what you have learned.

I’ll be coming round to deliver the fourth and final seminar – which is all about preparing for your presentation – so I’ll talk to you more in the next few days. If you’ve got any worries or concerns, do ask me questions or come and have a chat after the talk.

See you soon!