As another year passes, we bid farewell to another class of Chevening Scholars but each Chevener is unique which means, each Farewell is unique because the key element is you, our Chevening Scholars.
Having started working at the Chevening Secretariat shortly before Farewell last year, it was with the class of 2018 that I experienced my first full Chevening year – from your #ChosenforChevening moments right the way through to your #CheveningMemories. I met a lot of you throughout the year and spoke with many more of you via Instagram, Twitter, the Facebook group, or via email for projects that we worked on together, and Farewell 2019 was a great way to wrap up your year but also, my first full Chevening year too.
I’ve said before that I am a fan of lists (and putting together multiple scholar blogs each month, I’d have to be!) so I will say farewell one final time with my list of top five of my favourite elements of and moments from (in no particular order -ish) Farewell 2019.
Long before you arrive at Farewell, you are no doubt already preparing what you will wear on the day, and as a huge fan of the traditional, cultural, and otherwise fashionable outfits you wear to all Chevening events, I had to start my list here. So, here are a few great outfits I saw (and loved).
Let’s be honest, if there is food on offer which doesn’t consist of sandwiches, then it is something worth noting and being excited about. This year, we had pastries, fruit, and tea/coffee to start, followed by mini fish and chips, mini burgers, and more. Yum!
With such a large international group of people, we always expect to see a lot of flags and this Farewell was no different. Many of you represented your countries/territories with pride holding up your flags for all to see. But, there was only one flag to lead them all, one flag to find them, one flag to bring them all, and through Chevening bind them… I may have changed the quote’s wording there slightly.
If we can’t all be on Chevening’s Instagram, we can all be in Chevening’s Instagram (frames). The Instagram frames definitely made the rounds and clearly you all had a lot of fun with them since you crashed Instagram (one broken frame, not the app)!
Who doesn’t love a selfie, right? Here are some of your great selfie moments which we caught from afar.
To all of our Chevening class of 2018 scholars, I wish you the best for your future and I know that we all here at the Chevening Secretariat look forward to seeing what you get up to as Chevening Alumni and being a part of your ongoing journey towards global leadership.
We celebrated being a little bit older and wiser at our annual Farewell event for departing Chevening Scholars at Alexandra Palace last week. 1,800 scholars from 111 countries around the world travelled to north London to celebrate our 35th anniversary. Scholars have spent the year studying, exploring and experiencing life in the UK as part of the programme.
I joined the Chevening Secretariat just two months prior to our annual Farewell event. There was a lot of work to do across the entire Secretariat to ensure we said farewell to our 2017 scholars in the right way and the right way we did! Following a great Farewell, we jumped straight into planning for Orientation, which is […]
And thus ends an incredible year with some incredible people who I know will go on to further embody everything Chevening is about — friendships, leadership, and progress. But first, a blog to commemorate the class of 2017’s Chevening Farewell through the eyes, smiles, and dance moves of a five foot two communications assistant… me! Farewell […]