The other 2015 finalists were The Border Consortium from Thailand and Myanmar and ZOA – Relief Hope Recovery, Sri Lanka.

Their prizes of $25,000 each were presented by The Most Reverend & Right Honourable, Dr John Sentamu, Archbishop of York, at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, on Tuesday evening, February 24, 2015. Represented by teams of three, each project was presented to the panel of five experts – Dr Alexander Betts, Director of the Refugee Studies Centre, Oxford; Dr Dawn Chatty, Professor of Anthropology and Forced Migration, University of Oxford; Mr Mohammed Suleman, Managing Director, Barrow & Gale; Dr Avila Kilmurray, Director of the Community Foundation for Northern Ireland and broadcaster Mr Michael Buerk, Chairman – for final assessments in the hours leading up to the ceremony. The panel were looking for evidence of increased self-reliance in the communities supported, the central ethos of the Prize, which recognises and rewards work that has improved the lives of refugees and displaced people. The teams and their project videos:
  • TBC – Naw Ta Mla Saw, Joint Secretary, Karen Women’s Union; Luiz Kaypoe, Secretary, Karenni Refugee Committee and Sally Thompson MBE, Director, The Border Consortium.
  • ZOA – Ruban Eliyathambi, Programme Manager, East (Sri Lanka); Guido de Vries, Country Director and Rebecca Owen, Head of Programmes.
Their cheques – along with trophies and certificates – were this year presented by Dr John Sentamu, Archbishop of York. The link with Lady Margaret Hall is because Ockenden International’s founder, the late Joyce Pearce OBE, began her career of service to refugees and displaced people at the college. A capacity crowd saw the Prize presentations and heard the three contenders explain their projects. The 2015 Prize attracted 67 projects from 39 countries with the finalists chosen by the preliminary judges in an exhaustive process throughout August-September-October 2014.