Near­ly eight decades af­ter its roots were plant­ed in the British cap­i­tal, The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) is re­turn­ing to Lon­don with a cel­e­bra­tion of the re­gion’s bright­est minds and bold­est achieve­ments. On No­vem­ber 7, the his­toric Ho­n­ourable So­ci­ety of Lin­coln’s Inn will host the sec­ond UWI Lon­don Ben­e­fit Din­ner un­der the theme “Ed­u­cate to El­e­vate.”

The black-tie event will bring to­geth­er an ar­ray of Caribbean-British trail­blaz­ers whose lives em­body that theme. Head­ing the list of ho­n­ourees are Baroness Pa­tri­cia Scot­land, the first woman to lead the 56-na­tion Com­mon­wealth; Sir Trevor Mc­Don­ald, one of Britain’s most re­spect­ed broad­cast­ers; phil­an­thropist and en­tre­pre­neur Am­bas­sador There­sa Roberts; and Soni­ta Al­leyne, the first Black per­son to head a col­lege at the Uni­ver­si­ties of Ox­ford or Cam­bridge. The VM Group, a 150-year-old Ja­maican fi­nan­cial con­glom­er­ate, will al­so be recog­nised for its in­ter­na­tion­al foot­print.

For Vice-Chan­cel­lor Sir Hi­lary Beck­les, the din­ner is both a home­com­ing and a state­ment of in­tent.

“Lon­don is part of our iden­ti­ty as The UWI was found­ed as a Col­lege in a spe­cial re­la­tion­ship with the Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege of Lon­don al­most 80 years ago,” he said. “We’re thrilled to present the sec­ond UWI Lon­don Ben­e­fit Din­ner, fol­low­ing a high­ly suc­cess­ful stag­ing last year. Friends of The UWI can look for­ward to an en­chant­i­ng cel­e­bra­tion of Caribbean ex­cel­lence as we pay it for­ward for the next gen­er­a­tion of thinkers and do­ers from the re­gion.”

That “pay­ing it for­ward” takes a con­crete form: pro­ceeds from the evening will con­tin­ue to fund post­grad­u­ate schol­ar­ships for stu­dents tack­ling cli­mate ac­tion and oth­er en­vi­ron­men­tal, so­cial and gov­er­nance (ESG) chal­lenges.

“The Uni­ver­si­ty is ful­ly en­gaged with the Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment Goals and pro­ceeds from this event will pro­vide a route of ac­tion for tal­ent­ed and am­bi­tious stu­dents to get the train­ing need­ed to de­liv­er the change we need,” ex­plained Eliz­a­beth Buchanan Hind, Head of UWI Ad­vance­ment.

The din­ner’s pa­trons in­clude Baroness Floel­la Ben­jamin, Sir Lenny Hen­ry and com­pos­er Pro­fes­sor Shirley Thomp­son. Or­gan­is­ers promise a “mag­i­cal evening” of cul­ture, net­work­ing and phil­an­thropy in one of Lon­don’s most sto­ried venues.

Fur­ther de­tails and tick­et in­for­ma­tion are avail­able at uwilon­don.com.