Our Patrons
A patron for a charity is a well-known individual who lends their name and support, to help to raise awareness, promote the organisations mission and garner support.
Nicci Gerrard
Nicci Gerrard is a writer and campaigner, a celebrated novelist and recipient of the 2016 Orwell Prize for Journalism ‘Exposing Britain’s Social Evils’. This work grew out of her father’s death from dementia in 2014 and her belief that the disease, its impact on individuals, families and wider society, needs light thrown upon it in order to improve the experience and support of those affected.
Nicci Gerrard is also co-founder of John’s Campaign, named after her father, which has campaigned to give carers of those with dementia the same rights as parents of children to accompany them in hospital. Recognised by NHS policy makers, by charities, by nurses and doctors and carers, almost every hospital across the UK has now signed up.
Onjali Q. Rauf
Onjali Q. Raúf is a multi award-winning children’s author, playwright and women’s and refugee human rights activist. She is the founder and CEO of Making Herstory which works to end the abuse, enslavement and trafficking of women and girls in the UK, and O’s Refugee Aid Team which mobilises aid convoys and funds to help frontline refugee response teams across northern France and beyond. She is the author of multi-award-winning and Sunday Times bestselling children’s book, The Boy at the Back of the Class, which received the Blue Peter Award and the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize in 2019, the Sakura Medal of Japan in 2020 and the Janusz Korczak Prize in 2022 amongst many others.
From February to July of 2024, a theatre adaptation of the story toured across England. Her follow-up stories include The Star Outside My Window, The Night Bus Hero, The Great Food Bank Heist, The Lion Above the Door, Where Magic Grows, a non-fiction title, Hope on the Horizon, and most recently, The Letter With the Golden Stamp and a first picture book, The Girl at the Front of the Class. She was awarded an MBE in 2022 for her services to women’s rights and children’s literature, and in 2023, was recipient of the NEU Fred and Anne Jarvis Award for services to education and her humanitarian works.
Onjali is also a Patron of the National Association for the Teaching of English (NATE), VIP Reading, Facefront Theatre, and NIA Women; a Trustee of Killed Women (KWN); an Ambassador for Walk With Amal, and a contributor to BBC Radio 2’s Pause for Thought. An alumnus of the Cambridge University Senior Faith in Leadership programme, she was listed as one of BBC’s 100 most influential women from around the world in 2019.
For more information on Onjali please visit her website.
