London - Three young South Africans “who are making lasting change in their communities” were honoured with awards from Queen Elizabeth at Buckingham Palace.
Monday was no ordinary day for Patrice Madurai, Emma Dicks and Nosipho Bele – South Africa’s first winners of the Queen’s Young Leaders Awards.
The women, with the other award recipients, started the day by having breakfast with UK Prime Minister David Cameron and former prime minister John Major at 10 Downing Street; then visited Twitter’s headquarters in London before popping in at the BBC World Service.
The highlight of the day, however, was receiving their awards from Queen Elizabeth at a ceremony attended by David Beckham and other high profile guests.
“It was not an average Monday and I can’t ever foresee having another Monday like that,” said Madurai.
According to its website, the awards recognise and celebrate exceptional people aged 18 to 29 from across the Commonwealth, who are “taking the lead in their communities and using their skills to transform lives”.
As part of the award, winners received mentoring and online learning provided by the University of Cambridge.
Madurai, 22, is the founder of the Cupcake reSolution, which has been running in Cape Town, Durban and Port Elizabeth and has helped hundreds of township residents to get their ID documents, with the help of the Department of Home Affairs.
Earlier this year she told the Cape Argus that every registration coincided with a celebration, with everyone receiving a cupcake and “celebrating themselves”.
She said the winners had received a standing ovation at Monday’s ceremony.
“It was so difficult to hold back the tears.”
Capetonian Dicks, 26, co-leads Innovate South Africa, which has two key programmes – a challenge that encourages high school pupils to create solutions to problems in their communities and Code for Cape Town – a holiday programme she founded that introduces high school girls to web development and the IT industry.
“The Queen’s Young Leaders Award has been an incredibly powerful encouragement to me.
“It has shown me how many people support the work of Code for Cape Town and Innovate South Africa, which makes my work seem easier,” she said.
Bele, 25, who grew up in Durban, completed a degree in theatre and performance at UCT.
She is a secondary school teacher and founder of Mentor Me to Success, which provides schoolchildren with one-to-one support from university students in Cape Town.
“It’s such an amazing feeling to be one of the first recipients of the Queen’s Young Leaders Award.
“To be presented with an award by the queen at Buckingham Palace in recognition of my work is such an incredible honour. It was also really inspiring to see all the other young leaders receive their awards.”
The search is now on for the 2016 Queen’s Young Leaders Award Winners.
Cape Argus