Hundreds of students gathered at Wembley Stadium to party 'Mardi Gras' style and celebrate raising thousands of pounds for the Wings of Hope Achievement Award (WOHAA)

Students from right across the UK who have taken part in the Wings of Hope Achievement Award were joined by senior political leaders and business leaders to celebrate their success.

The award ceremony at Wembley Stadium celebrated this year's 1,000 student participants' hard work, along with friends, family, teachers, and previous participants. Hosted by Babita Sharma, BBC News World presenter, the night was a roaring success.

Founders of the charity, business couple Dr. R. Sri Ram and Rajni Sriram cannot believe how their 'kitchen table discussion' about empowering young people has snowballed into such a well recognised and well-loved scheme. "As an entrepreneur myself, I know how challenging it is to manage people, time and money for projects, but these youngsters have just blown us away by their dogged determinism and enthusiasm to help the charity" says Dr. R Sri Ram. Mrs. Sriram, who runs the Wings of Hope says "we have had such great help at the charity from stars like Sir David Jason, and BBC's Robert Peston, but what really keeps my team spurred on are the outstanding efforts put in by the students every year."

The night began with the presentations of the Award Winners trophies to the runner up and winning teams in each of the five award categories, presented by distinguished guests and valued friends and supporters of the charity.

Trophies for the 'Most Innovative' category were presented by Jackie Cooper, Vice Chair of Edelman, followed by Mr. S. Laxminarayanan, Vice President and Head of Europe at TATA Consultancy Services, who presented the awards for the 'Most Awareness Raised' category. Mrs. Anne de Clerk, valued friend and supporter of the Wings of Hope flew over from Belgium to join in the celebrations and presented the awards for the 'Best Presentation' category, and the awards for 'Most Funds Raised' were presented by talented singer and actress Karen David.

The award for the 'Best Overall Team' was presented by Lord McNally, party leader of the Liberal Democrats in the House of Lords. Lord McNally commented after the event "we all found the awards ceremony at Wembley Stadium to be a most enjoyable and inspiring experience. It is very clear that the Wings of Hope is very much a win/win situation, with education for children in need and lessons for life being learnt by the young people doing the fund raising"

In keeping with the party atmosphere the award presentations were interspersed with live music from up and coming artist 'Natalie Marie' and dance performances from champion Urban dancers 'FuNKoLoGy' from Imperial College London, and dhol drummers 'Dhoom Foundation' from University College London.

Amongst the partygoers was special guest Annamalai Ganeshan, a 14 year old boy from a poor community in Chennai, South India, who is taught at one of the schools funded by WOHAA participants. His heartfelt speech on how the funds have helped to educate orphans like him and his classmates was met with a standing ovation from the hundreds of students that attended the event.

The night ended in style with a live set from KISS 100 DJ NEEV, who packed the dance floor as the students partied into the night. 'I had one of my best gigs to date! I had to jump off the decks at one point and boogie with them! I am so proud of them for raising so much and juggling studies too' writes DJ Neev - check out her blog and photos from the event here

Sir David Jason, who has been one of the key panellists in the award scheme, said "It is just brilliant to see so many students demonstrating skills in leadership, teamwork and social ethic to champion such a good cause for their counterparts across the world"

The Winners of the 'Best Overall Team' category, The Ribbon in the Sky Team from Haberdashers' Aske's Boys School will be jetting off this summer all expenses paid to India to teach at one of the schools their fundraising will go to support. Winners of the other four categories will receive high profile work experience placements within the Wings of Hope Corporate supporters, some of the top names in UK employment, including PricewaterhouseCoopers, Saatchi and Saatchi, Boots, Edelman, TATA, ARUP and many others.

Jola, from team Abolishing Dependency of Newstead Wood School for Girls had this to say...

"The Annual Award Ceremony was excellent. Our whole team had loads of fun that night! The best part was hearing that we were runners up for the Most Innovative Team!"

Meera from team Harmony of Nower Hills School says...

"Just wanted to say that the Award Ceremony was amazing, we all had such a good time! I'll definitely be there again next year!"