Nadiya taking a selfie with guests at the End of Year Celebration

Mosaic has held a special event to celebrate another successful year of its work in London and the South East.

The event took place at the iconic BT Tower in London’s West End and to everyone’s considerable pleasure, Nadiya Hussain, last year’s winner of BBC’s The Great British Bake Off, was the keynote speaker. Mosaic was also delighted to welcome its Founder Chairman HRH Princess Badiya bint El Hassan to the event, alongside Mosaic Ambassador and compere for the night, BBC London News Presenter Asad Ahmad.

The Mosaic End of Year celebration events are a wonderful opportunity for Mosaic to thank the people and organisations whose hard work and commitment makes its mentoring and impact possible, including its volunteer mentors; world of work visit hosts; inspirational speakers; its network of school teachers; as well as its funders and supporters. In particular, their dedication to the young people over the past academic year and beyond is celebrated.

Attending mentors and mentees from across Mosaic’s programmes had the opportunity to meet and talk with a large number of Mosaic’s advisory board, corporate partners and benefactors. Members of Team Eazo Peazo from Rivers Academy in Feltham, the team that triumphed in the South East Regional Final of Mosaic’s Enterprise Challenge competition and came third nationally, also attended the event and impressed with their challenging questions to the keynote speaker.

Speaking about the event, Nadiya Hussain said: “It’s been a pleasure to be part of such an uplifting celebration. Mosaic is clearly doing excellent, important work in supporting young people achieve their goals in life. I believe that we all have the potential to succeed but often it requires a little encouragement and inspiration to help us along the way. Mosaic is doing just this. Here’s to another year of success!”

Varinder Dhaliwal, Chairman of Mosaic’s London and South East Regional Leadership Group, also attended the event. He said: “I am very pleased to have the opportunity to celebrate another hugely successful year in the life of Mosaic and it’s been made all the more special by having Nadiya as our guest. At times such as this, it’s vital that we take time to thank the dozens of volunteer mentors who give up their time to support and inspire people across our programmes.”

The event also saw the crowning of the Mosaic London and South East Regional Mentors of the Year. Taking the London crown was Khalid Khan from Hermes Investment Management, whose phenomenal record mentoring on the Enterprise Challenge competition saw him take two teams through to the London Regional Finals, eventually winning the national competition through Team S-Mart from Eden Girls’ School. The South East Mentor of the Year was awarded to Nageen Faruqi, a trained accountant who has taken on multiple mentoring sessions on the Primary School Programme in the region to great success.

The event also awarded highly commended mentors of the year awards to Brooke Greville and Samrah Jaffrey respectively for their outstanding contributions to Mosaic mentoring programmes, whilst awarding the inaugural teacher of the year prize to Fasal Hussain from Aylward Academy, an award designed to recognise the efforts of Mosaic colleagues in schools who truly go beyond the call of duty to support their young people and help deliver Mosaics programmes. In the words of a Mosaic member of staff, “Fasal makes the process of mentor delivery a pleasure!”

Mosaic runs all of its programmes across London and the South East, namely its Primary School and Secondary School programmes as well as the Enterprise Challenge and Ex-Offender programme.

Mosaic would like to thank Rassmal Investments LLC its generous support of the event.