PRIZES FOR HUMANITARIAN WORK

Nat Ware (Economics/Law) has been awarded the Sydney Chinese Lions' Humanitarian Scholarship for 2010, worth $2,000, with Jesse Buckingham (Commerce/Law) being awarded one of two Consolation Prize  ($1,000 each. The Lions Club of Sydney Chinese Inc. uses this Scholarship to encourage and recognise humanitarian services undertaken by university students.

In 2005 Nat was the NSW World Vision Youth Ambassador, volunteering in Mozambique, Africa. In 2007 he established 180 Degrees Consulting, the world's first international pro-bono student consultancy.with the aim of enabling university students to apply their studies in such a way as to to help non-profit organisations achieve a greater social impact. The organisation, with Nat as International Director (and President of the Sydney University Chapter), now has a chapter starting in Sweden, and partnerships in Romania, Mexico and India. At any one time it has over 200 student consultants around the world working on 15-20 different consulting projects, involving, among others, the Crossroads Foundation in Hong Kong, IEDC Bled School of Management in Slovenia, and Viola Vitolis in Bangladesh.

In 2009 Nat formed a team from 180 Degrees Consulting to enter Challenge:Future , the world's largest social entrepreneurship competition, this year involving over 15,000 university from more than 70 countries. The team, made up of Paul's men (Nat, Shane Treeves, and Edward Miller), was judged the Best Australian Team, Winner of the Challenge:Future IEDC (Education) Competition (out of 552 teams worldwide), and Overall Runner-Up in the entire competition. One of the solutions they proposed was a student-to-student free online university to increase the accessibility and quality of education in developing countries, a scheme which will shortly be implemented by the IEDC-Bled School of Management in Slovenia.

Nat has served as Executive Director of the Young Leaders Network, and as Sydney University Environment Convenor.  He coaches disadvantaged youth in public speaking, works to combat violence against women as a White Ribbon Ambassador, and is developing a microinsurance scheme to reduce the vulnerability of the poor in developing countries.

He is currently completing his Honours thesis in Economics before proceeding to the second year of his Law degree in 2011.

Jesse Buckingham did voluntary work as a schoolboy in various non-governmental organisations and orphanages in Cambodia, including M'lop Tapang, Sok Sabay, and Tabitha, designing skills based activities for orphans and construct 10 houses for impoverished families there.  In 2008, he became an Ambassador for Opportunity International, one of the world's leading providers of micro-financial services where, together with a colleague, he designed a Microfinance Education Module for High School Certificate Economics students that they now deliver at NSW high schools.