Awards for Bridging Cultures

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• Judging
  • The judging panel
    • Ranjit Sondhi

• Judging
  • The judging panel
    • Eddie Botsio
    • Ted Cantle
    • Prakesh Daswani
    • Dr Alison Elliot
    • John Hall
    • Mimi Harker
    • Ibrahim Mogra
    • Heather Petch
    • Ranjit Sondhi
    • Dr Cathy Stephens OBE
    • Baroness Verma
    • Maire Young

Ranjit Sondhi, CBE

Trustee, The Baring Foundation

Born in India, Mr Sondhi has lived, studied and worked in Birmingham for over 40 years and has a BSc (Hons) in physics from the University of Birmingham. Since 1969 he has worked on a number of community action projects in inner city areas. He founded the Asian Resource Centre in Handsworth in 1976 and was made CBE for services to community relations in 1999.

Mr Sondhi has a distinguished record of service on public bodies. He has been deputy chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality, chairman of the Refugee Employment, Training and Education Forum and a member of the Ethnic Minority Advisory Committee of the Judicial Studies Board. He has also served on the Lord Chancellor's advisory committee on legal education and conduct, and on the task force on disability rights at the former Department for Education and Employment. From 1998 to 2006 he was a governor of the BBC with special responsibility for the English regions. In 2007 Mr Sondhi was appointed as a Civil Service Commissioner.

Mr Sondhi remains involved in local projects including services for the visually impaired, South Asian arts, black oral history and mentoring pupils at risk of school exclusion. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and a member of the Lunar Society in Birmingham.

A senior lecturer at the University of Birmingham, Westhill, where he co-ordinated a new degree in race and ethnic studies, Mr Sondhi was awarded an honorary DUniv by the University of Central England in 2003.