Time to celebrate three decades of awards!

The VNEF Trustees, photographed in July 2024

August 2025

It is now 30 years since we made our very first Noon scholarship award. We are fast approaching our 250th award, and and it feels the right moment to celebrate not only the work of the Vicky Noon Educational Foundation and its Trustees, but also the remarkable achievements of our many Noon Scholars, who have gone on to do great things.

Back in 1994, our first award went to Shaista Ehsan Khilji from the University of the Punjab, who studied International Management at Queen's, Cambridge - and has gone on to become a tenured professor. The award, she recalls, was "essential" and helped "realise her ambitions into academia".

This year of celebration began for us last month with an exciting launch of the new Noon Alumni Society (NAS), which we hope will play an increasingly important role in the future work and development of our Foundation.

This was launched at St Antony’s College, Oxford – which of course houses the Asian Studies Centre long headed by my distinguished fellow Trustee, Professor Faisal Devji – at a special evening event exploring prospects for Pakistan going forward.

Five former Noon Scholars joined us to discuss our NAS proposal and we have confirmed a working document with some key principles to reach out to all our alumni. Our vision is to develop a vibrant network that will allow us to host events, create support networks, and extend the good works of the Foundation.

This has been an amazing journey. Today, we find former Noon scholars who are professors, business leaders, senior government officials and civil servants, media stars, and research experts. We are learning more and more from the results from our current survey.

Congratulations to you all! As part of our celebration year, we will shortly be relaunching our Scholar-of-the-Month feature on our website. Write to us if you have a special story to share and do fill in the alumni survey if you have not done so already.

We are also planning a major reunion event for our scholars – a first, although we have of course welcomed many past scholars at our annual gatherings and previous receptions in Pakistan.

Let us celebrate together - watch this space for more details!

Paul Flather

Chair, VNEF