Nov. 14, 2017
Warwick Law LLM alumni win prestigious awards
The purpose of the Queen’s Young Leaders Programme – which was started in 2014 – is to discover, celebrate and support exceptional young people from across the Commonwealth who use their skills to transform lives. And despite only running for three years, Warwick Law School has already had two winners!
The most recent winner is former Warwick Law LLM student Bukola Bolarinwa, who was presented with the award as recognition of her amazing work with blood donors in Nigeria. Bukola set up Haima Health Initiative in 2015 to address the blood shortage in Nigeria and lack of regular donors. She explains, “We work with a team of volunteers to organise monthly blood drives across five states to ensure hospitals have enough blood for patients to be given out for free. We have built an online blood register which aims to be the largest in Nigeria for young voluntary donors to be linked to patients in need of blood.”
Bukola is also President of the Sickle Cell Aid Foundation (SCAF), she says, “Nigeria has the highest rate of SCD in the world as well as one of the highest rates of mortality from the disease and unfortunately awareness is incredibly low and the levels of care are sub-par.”
Speaking about her award Bukola explains, “It was an exciting feeling because as much as I wanted it, I genuinely did not expect to win. It felt amazing for our work in our little corner of the world to be recognised at such a large platform.”
Back in 2015, another Warwick Law LLM alumnus, Nkechi Azinge received the Queen’s Young Leaders award – also in connection with Sickle Cell – her award was as a result of her work with SCAF.
Bukola and Nkechi have more than these prestigious awards in common, they both studied together for their undergraduate degrees at the University of Leicester and their LLMs at Warwick Law, albeit in different years. Their friendship was established at the Nigerian Law School in Bwari in 2012, when they were both involved with SCAF.
Bukola and Nkechi both studied our LLM in International Economic Law at Warwick Law. Nkechi is currently studying her PhD at Warwick, she says, “Warwick exposed my mind to varying aspects of Law, which I am very passionate about. Warwick was and is still awesome! I absolutely love it here.”
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Content added on 14th November 2017.
