The Finale 2014 & The Fun!

The GoUNESCO Finale 2014 happened on 19^th April 2014. A few days before the event, the mandate from our boss (Ajay!) was to make the event fun, funny and reflect the challenge in every way. So, started the quest to make the finale fun!

Consequentially, even before the event flow was decided upon, we decided to include fillers to keep audience engaged. We designed a set of three fillers to reflect heritage and technology (which meant our Facebook page!). The fillers turned out to be a HUGE success since almost everyone in the audience were excited to answer questions and at the end of the event an elderly gentleman walked up to us and told us about how he got 2 right answers!

Now, that we have established how much fun the event really was (:P), we will tell you a little about our guests of honour.  There were 4 guests of honour presiding over the event and giving away prizes – The event had four guests of honour – Mr. Anand Kanitkar, Programme Officer, Culture Unit, UNESCO New Delhi, Ms. Anuradha Reddy, Convener Hyderabad, INTACH, Mr. Ramakrishna Rao, Deputy Director, A P State Department of Archeology and Museum and Dr. A. Nagendar Reddy, Director, Salar Jung Museum.

While the guests spoke about the importance of heritage sites & their upkeep, the winners had their own story to share. Ajay & Parul, the joint first prize winners (who visited a whopping 28 WHS last year) admitted that they never traveled much until they took up the GoUNESCO challenge! So, we take quite the credit for letting the travel bug on them. Nishant, who holds the second place (with 21 WHS) shared moments from his trip in a presentation.

The winners totally got prizes worth Rs. 75000 including free Himalayan treks from IndiaHikes, a free stay at the historical settlement of Anegundi from Uramma Heritage Homes, tour vouchers from Explore Hampi and travel accessories from GoUNESCO.

As part of the finale, we also officially announced the GoUNESCO partnerships with EU Heritage Tour and the launch of Active Heritage Holidays.

Watch the recorded LiveCast of the Finale here and go here for the pictures. Thanks a lot to all the volunteers who helped put together the finale and all the participants of last year for making the challenge a real challenge!

Do not worry if you missed all the fun of the finale, just make sure you start right now and take part in the challenge this year!