00:01Hi everyone, I'm Sophie and I'm here with Tessie Ojo who is the CEO of the Diana Award and I
00:08wonder if you could just start Tessie by telling us a little about the Diana Award and the work that
00:12you guys do.
00:13Absolutely, firstly it's wonderful to be here, thank you so much for asking me along on this really special week
00:19celebrating mothers gone and mothers presents.
00:23So the Diana Award is a charity legacy set up in memory of Princess Diana and we are privileged to
00:31be the only charity across the world that really celebrates and continues her legacy of, you know, Princess Diana believes
00:38that young people have the power to change the world and that's exactly what we do.
00:42So everything we do, our real mission is around helping young people, fostering change in young people, fostering, inspiring and
00:51developing positive change in the lives of young people.
00:55The idea behind the award is to sort of continue Diana's legacy I suppose and the good things that she
01:00did and recognise people who are following in her footsteps who perhaps maybe don't even realise that that's what they're
01:05doing.
01:05Absolutely, so the Diana Award is really about helping young people be the positive change in their communities, helping them
01:12think about going outside of themselves, serving others, you know, walking in her steps literally, but also shining a spotlight
01:21on young people, celebrating young people when they do create positive change in their communities.
01:27And we are incredibly honoured to be that ambassador of this legacy that, you know, 20 years on we have
01:34thousands and thousands of young people from across the world who are committed to continuing the legacy of Princess Diana.
01:42Now we've been featuring a couple of past Diana Award winners on our website and there was a little boy,
01:48well a young man now, called Junior, who was a victim of bullying, wasn't he, when he was younger. Can
01:53you tell us a little bit about his story?
01:55Absolutely, so Junior is one of 47,000 young people from across the world, across the whole world who have
02:02received the Diana Award and Junior, you know, was only 12 years old or even younger when he began to
02:09dance, he loved dancing, but that gave him, that brought him a lot of bullying.
02:14He began, you know, he was different, he was a different boy in the sense because maybe boys, his mate
02:20wanted to play football, but he wanted to dance.
02:22And his story was quite sad, exactly.
02:26And you would think in today's world that a boy who wants to dance is okay, but not so for
02:32Junior and for many other young people across the UK today.
02:35But what he did was, you know, there's two choices, isn't it, when you face adversity, you could either change
02:42the whole course of your life and just fit in, or you could stand up and say, actually, boys can
02:48dance.
02:49And that's exactly what Junior did. We're incredibly proud of him.
02:52I know that on Saturday, just this Saturday gone, he was auditioning for Motown, and I hope he gets it.
03:01It's incredible to see.
03:02And he's gone on to dance with Justin Bieber and things like that, hasn't he?
03:06Yes, yes. I keep getting all his updates. I'm so proud of him.
03:08But he, like one of the 47,000 young people who have received the Diana Award, just incredibly show how,
03:15you know, commitment and how you can, you have the power to change your world.
03:20You can change people's perspective. You can change something for yourself.
03:24I mean, Junior has inspired hundreds and thousands of other boys to take up dancing, and that's the power that
03:30one person can have.
03:31It's amazing. Both William and Harry have been involved with the Diana Award, I know, in the past.
03:36What has been your experience meeting them and hearing them talk about their mum?
03:39Oh, you know, we are incredibly honoured to have their support.
03:43And like you rightly said, both princes have been so supportive of the Diana Award.
03:48You know, Prince William has championed a lot of our anti-bullying programmes.
03:53He's visited lots of schools, met thousands of young people who have both been affected by bullying or who are
04:00what we call anti-bullying ambassadors,
04:02young people that we train in schools to support their peers.
04:05And last year, he actually launched a campaign, what we call our Stand Up to Bullying campaign.
04:11And this was a campaign that, and this is still a campaign that looks at the impact of bullying way
04:17beyond the playground.
04:18Because we know, for example, that every year over 16,000 young people in the UK are absent from school
04:25as a result of bullying.
04:27It's an important issue. It's an issue that we all need to pay attention to.
04:30And I remember...
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