Summer NEWS 2025(DRAFT)
From left to right top: S-J Heany(COO) with the Trustees Will Dear, Amrit Singh, Founder Jania Geoghegan, Ronke Kokoruwe, Ellie Patsalos, Sui Chin McKeand and Sarah Constantine-Haidry.
THANKING ALL OUR MENTORS, CHARITY PARTNERS AND FRIENDS of the Madrinha Trust for coming to the 2025 Summer Party @ the May Fair Hotel, London W1
This year London has been gripped in a heatwave and we are enjoying a rather wonderful Summer ! On 25 June, Madrinha held its Summer Party at the May Fair hotel, London W1. We had a great gathering of mentors, partner charity representatives, trustees and invited guests. Jania Geoghegan welcomed us all and we were delighted that so many of you were able to attend for the very special Q&A with Ronke Kokoruwe who has recently joined the board of trustees at Madrinha. Ronke has a very active presence on Linked In. Her super power is “coaching professional women to speak with INTENTION and make an impact in the workplace and beyond”. She is the ⭐ Founder of iverbalise and is also a coach, trainer, Keynote Speaker, Ex-Lawyer, TedX Speaker & Host and enormous good fun too!
Everyone was hugely inspired by Jania’s fireside chat with Ronke and we had some interesting question from our audience. (see Vimeo clips)
Another highlight at our event was having Prena Senchury, a Madrinha Trust Alumni, joining us as our guest speaker from the Himalayan Youth Foundation (Nepal), currently completing her Masters @ Wolverhampton University.
Sam Michel, co-founder of the Himalayan Youth Foundation, UK, gave a great introduction and explained that at the beginning of this year, Prena surprised us all by announcing she was coming to London, with one month’s notice.
Enjoy Sam Michel introducing Prena here …
It transpires that Prena was equally taken aback when she was awarded a student visa so quickly after applying. She is currently at the University of Wolverhampton for 12 months completing her masters in Research Public Health, whilst also juggling her time working in a local care home. Prena qualified with a nursing degree from Aditya College Of Nursing in India at the end of 2024.
It is no surprise to any of us that Prena is already top of her class at Wolverhampton University, helping the other students to get their best grades.
We were very lucky that Prena’s mentor, Aine Feeney of nearly 8 years, was free to spend an afternoon with us in London the day before the Summer Party. This was the first time that Prena and Aine have ever met - a very special moment - and the first time that Prena had ever seen London’s best tourist attractions. Also on the bus was Debbie from KHULA and we must thank her also for taking such good care of Prena.
Bringing us to the other attendees from Saigon Children, Vietnam we had the pleasure of Dr Vy Vu, CIO for the charity and practising Psychiatrist in ASD & ADHD.
We had our friends from EDP Trust Ghana, Simon and Stephanie both trustees enjoying a great conversation with Keith Sonnet, CEO of Computer Aid International. Madrinha Trust is especially delighted to be in conversation and partnering with Computer Aid International with the first shipment of computer equipment going to EDP Trust.
We were very fortunate to have KHULA’s CEO, Debbie Heustice again with us this year and her Director of Fundraising and Communications Helen Mitchell.
This year KHULA has expanded more opportunities through our collaborative Fellowship Programme with Teach the Nation SA and the Madrinha Trust. This year has been especially exciting with the new internship collaboration with the Nasasani Trust / Kruger Park (SA).
More of that later…
We were delighted that Ahmed Massoud, the new Chair of The Hanoon Foundation (FQMS), Khaled Dawas (ex-Chair) and trustee Anjum Misbahuddin, were able to attend. This year because of all the problems in Palestine, Madrinha Trust was happy to sponsor two extraordinary scholars to come to the UK for their electives.
We also welcomed the CGEF chair, Roxanne St Claire and Jacqueline Austin we are hoping to expand our collaborative thinking to see if there are any opportunities in the future we can work on together.
It was delightful having our ex- Treasurer Sean Vickers in attendance bringing fun and joy to the party, we all join in congratulating him on the success of his recent business news at his company Aurora joining with the Delta Capita Group.
2025 ALUMNI COMMITTEE “MTAC” & the 2025 Career Skills Programme (CSP) up-date
Delighted that the MTAC are fully onboard and proactively running our Career Skills Programme this year. We have completed 5 out of the 6 workshops on the programme and this year we introduced Inspirational Speaker Slots on the last Friday of every month. These are all saved on Zoom Videos and are available as part of our CSP Vimeo Library Archive.
Very special thanks to our Inspirational Speakers so far this year starting with Joseph Mensah, Deloitte SA/ Africa, Ntwanie Ngomane, BDO UK, Ivan Ilemut (Alumni) Tech Entrepreneur, CAMTech Robotics, Uganda, David Oliphant, CEO, Teach the Nation SA, Associate Professor Bennett Kankuzi, Head of Computer Science Department at Malawi University of Science and Technology. Each of whom were interviewed by our MTAC members.
We are looking forward to resuming these in Autumn, special guests in the wings are Laurence Kruger & Phum (Nasasani Trust/ WIS), EduFun, CEO, Jenny Taylor,
This year we are very fortunate to be partnering with Deloitte WorldClass Program - Joseph Mensah’s initiative and this career skills programme dovetails beautifully with our CSP marking a step up for all our scholars who can now achieve Deloitte certificated completion certificates to put on their LinkedIn profiles and CVs.
KRUGER PARK SA / Nasasani Trust team up with KHULA, EduFun & the Madrinha Trust for Internships
Following our very successful trip to SA at the end of last year, we had such a wonderful time meeting and spending time with Laurence Kruger, Alison and Phum who run the Women in Science Project out of the Science Faculty, in Skukuza, Kruger Park. We are very grateful to Laurence and his team for the wonderful collaboration we have started with the Madrinha Trust scholars, KHULA and EduFun. The recent residential internships have provided essential experience for final year students, graduates and fellows to work collaboratively on science projects in the field, with leading scientists on sustainable conservation projects emphasising the importance of education to sustain the land, the animals and the people.
Special thanks to Laurence Kruger and Phum Simelane, who selected 2 of our scholars Sabani (EduFun) and Senamile (KHULA) to be part of their Women in Science project, a 6 week programme specifically for female conservationists.
This year thanks to a special donation to our Learning Skills Fund we were able to seed a pilot internship idea with Laurence and Debbie (KHULA) providing a 2 week outward bound professional development skills and science internship programme for 10 of our Madrinha scholars to attend. Plus a 4 week programme specifically aimed at the scholars with science degrees. This unique experience has been a huge success and we hope to be able to be able to continue this internship programme into 2026.
2025 MADRINHA TRUST SCHOLAR MENTEE AWARDS
Friday 02 May 2025 via Zoom
Each year we run the Madrinha Trust Scholar Mentee Awards to highlight individual scholars’ exceptional achievements and to give confidence and support for their upcoming interviews. A Madrinha Trust award is an accolade they can highlight and be proud of. With special thanks to Will Dear (Trustee) for helping to select the top students this year.
Again this year, Jania asked that Madrinha include a Special Recognition of Heroism Award which were awarded to all the Hanoon Foundation (FQMS) Medics and Students in Gaza, Palestine.
You can see a full list of winners here.
2025 CURRENT SCHOLAR MENTEE by Country
Our current cohort :
23 South Africa
08 Ghana
02 Kenya
02 Malawi
01 Tanzania
02 Uganda
08 Vietnam
09 Palestine
This brings the current sponsorship total to 57 with 124 alumni.
SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS
We are especially excited that our students are embracing LinkedIn, WhatsApp and Zoom as their tools for future success. With more and more interviewers and first interviewees using these platforms we are proud to be giving our students the right skillsets to enable them to do well.
We recently invited people to share their Instagram stories on Madrinha’s Instagram which we are sharing live on our website Instagram: @madrinha_trust.
WELCOMING NEW MENTORS…
Thank you to all our mentors and new mentors who have started their mentoring journey with Madrinha this year. We loved that so many of you enjoyed meeting us at the Summer Party and we look forward to seeing you again on Monday 01 December 2025 at the May Fair Hotel.
We would like to take this opportunity to thank Amrit Singh, trustee and her team at the May Fair hotel for hosting such wonderful parties.
Jania Geoghegan, Founder
A few words from Jania…
As we look forward to our Summer holidays we also look forward to hearing from you on our WhatsApp Groups and via our LinkedIn platform.
Thank you all for the support you give to your Madrinha Scholars and of course to the Madrinha Trust.
Finally. we hope for peace around the world especially for our poor students and doctors in Gaza, Palestine.
All the very best and have a great Summer,
Jania and the Madrinha Team