Brighton boy wins Gold Award at The Child of Sussex 2023 awards

Ravi and his best friend Betsy, with his award

Eight year old Ravi Adelekan from Brighton, was over the moon to receive the Gold Award at The Child of Sussex 2023 Awards, organised by More Radio.

The incredibly inspiring ceremony was held on Friday 30th June at East Sussex School of Circus Arts, in the middle of the Sussex countryside. As well as the awards, there were plenty of amazing activities to entertain the children and their families, including crazy golf, laser tag and the all important ice cream van!

The Child of Sussex Awards, now in their 10th year, are designed to celebrate the achievements of the county's most precious asset: its children. There are 11 awards that cover all aspects of a child’s life and Ravi’s award ( originally the Young Performer Award but renamed this year to cover the breadth of Ravi’s charity work) was this year called the Gold Award.

Ravi was awarded this fantastic accolade because of the amazing work he has done to both raise awareness of, and funds to increase medical research into brain tumours.

In September 2021, Ravi was diagnosed out of the blue with a tumour on his brainstem. Despite life-saving surgery in October 2021 to reduce the size of his brain tumour, Ravi still struggles with sight, hearing, tremors, balance issues and facial palsy. He decided to look for the silver lining of his situation and focused on using his voice to help others learn more about the symptoms of brain tumours, as well as setting himself a target of 250k for The Brain Tumour Charity and brainstrust. As of this date, he has already raised 82k through a variety of events.

November 2022 saw the launch of the Ravi’s Dream campaign with a cover version of ‘A Million Dreams’ with a video featuring musicians, athletes and celebrities, including Hugh Jackman, Paloma Faith, Bastille, Metronomy, Coldplay, Mary Berry, De La Soul, footballer Leandro Trossard, Björn Ulvaeus (ABBA) and many more.

In June 2023 he put on a football fundraising day at Worthing FC which included a girls and boys under 8’s tournament and then an adult charity match vs The Preston Park Panthers. Ravi’s Dream Team included Romy Madley Croft (the XX),

Jimi Famurewa (Masterchef /food writer) , Joseph Mount (Metronomy) , Comedians Michael Odewale and Ola Labib, Chris Reed (Plastician), Seye Adelekan (Gorillaz) Ceylon Andi Hickman from Dulwich Hamlet Women and one of Ravi’s favourite teachers from his school, Dan Baker.

Ravi has been overwhelmed by the support he has received for his campaign, which has has seen Ravi share his story far and wide, charming all comers on ITV’s This Morning, BBC Breakfast News, The Adam Buxton Podcast, Lauren Laverne’s BBC 6Music show and featuring on the cover of The Week Junior magazine.

Ravi has many more exciting projects lined up for 2023 as he works towards that £250,000 fundraising goal

Head to www.ravisdream.com to learn more about Ravi, donate to his campaign, or look for him on social media @ravis_dream