A FORMER Worle Community School Academy resident has attended an event at Buckingham Palace to celebrate the completion of her Duke of Edinburgh Gold award.

Olivia Finch, 18, did much of her DofE volunteering while at Worle and The King Alfred School Academy in Highbridge.

She completed her Bronze DofE at Worle while in Year 9 and then her Gold DofE at TKASA in Year 12.

At Worle, she became the first ever Jill Dando News student reporter aged only 12, with hundreds of students across the school, Somerset and even in Malawi following suit.

She is now studying to be a doctor at Bristol University.

Olivia said: “It was an honour to be invited to the Palace in order to celebrate along with lots of other award achievers.

“I really enjoyed the whole DofE experience with one of my key highlights being the expeditions which I got to do with my classmates both at Worle Community School Academy and The King Alfred’ School Academy.”

The timely Jill Dando News was launched in 2017 after students at nearby Priory Academy - also part of The Priory Learning Trust - sowed the seeds of the groundbreaking project on memory of Jill Dando.

The fast-expanding project has been backed by two Prime Ministers, Mr Speaker and a host of other world figures in a world of bad news and rocketing mental health issues.

It trains real-life journalists and brilliant people of the future to find, write, and post positive good news stories, with training by professional journalists including Nigel Dando, Fiona Bruce, and others from BBC, ITV, and Sky News.