I promise!

A Durham girl has come second in a national Facebook competition and won £1000 for her cause.

Ellie Kramers (St. Mary’s, 2nd Year), was among hundreds of students from universities around the country who were photographed in an oversized Barclays branded armchair with a charitable promise on a whiteboard.

Ellie sits in a really big chair

The ‘promisingstudents’ initiative, run by Barclays in association with Student Volunteering Week, challenged participating students to attract the highest number of likes to their photo and offered £1000 to each of the top three contestants. The ensuing competition caused a campaigning frenzy amongst student Facebook communities. With the support of Durham students, school friends, the Georgian press, The Tab and others, Ellie managed to attract 2816 likes on her photo.

Ellie made the promise on behalf of the Roddy Scott foundation which educates the children of Chechen refugees in Georgia. The Pankisi Gorge, the region of Georgia in which the Chechen refugees live, is considered one of the most dangerous places on earth and talking to Ellie, who has worked on the ground for the charity and is one of their trustees, it is clear she is passionate about her cause – watch out for a full interview with Ellie on The Tab next week for more information on the foundation and the issues surrounding the Chechen refugee community.

Guns and horses in the Pankisi Gorge

The population of Chechen refugees has more than doubled since the second Chechen war and the community live by, often archaic, traditional values – blood feuds and domestic violence are common – and the community is seen by terrorists and extremists as a hiring ground for mercenaries.

Over the last five years, the Roddy Scott foundation has crucially “built trust in a very suspicious community” and started to provide a formal education for the Chechen children. The £1000 prize money is equivalent to one month of salaries for the foundation’s teachers and raise all important awareness for the foundation which struggles to fund-raise because of the “politically sensitive” nature of region.

Some of the Chechen children who will benefit from the prize money

In a Facebook post, following the announcement on Friday afternoon, Ellie said  “I have 2816 people to thank, but in short you are all fantastic! Thank you Thank you Thank you Thank you!”

The competition was won by Sean Chien Nquyen from LSE who promised to volunteer to build studying facilities for poor children in Central Vietnam and received 4596 likes.