One Christmas Eve, when I was around ten years old, my mum called me into the kitchen. She had to pop out to the shops, she said, and told me to keep an eye on the pans. ‘Keep stirring,’ she said. ‘Make sure you don’t let anything burn.’ I loved cooking with my mum and thought of myself as a bit of junior masterchef, so this was music to my ears. I worried about my mum, however. It was super cold that day and she had already been out to the shops three or four times already. There were a few more pans than usual, but this wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. Each Christmas we would have a feast, a mix of traditional British options and Nigerian cuisine – peppered chicken or turkey, roast potatoes, devils on horseback, jollof rice, egusi soup – and Mum would always make a start on Christmas Eve.
I stirred the pots and eventually my mother came home, laden with more bags. ‘This year, we are not just cooking for us,’ she said. That evening, she said, we were also going out to feed the homeless. She and a few of her friends were making thirty or forty meals each to hand out in central London. This was on top of her usual cooking for our Christmas feast.
It had been a difficult year. My mum had been in and out of hospital and we didn’t have very much money, as she hadn’t been able to work. It would have been perfectly acceptable for her to stay in and focus on herself and her family. But no. A few hours later, we were standing on a square near Holborn station, handing out cardboard containers of hot food to a long queue of homeless men and women. For her, this was what Christmas was all about. Despite the things that were going on at home, she was grateful. She felt ‘blessed’, she told me, and saw it as her duty to pass those blessings on. Driving home with her friends, singing Christmas carols, laughing and joking, I could see that we did have a lot to be thankful for. We were in a position to help and so we did.
This was nothing new. Just after I turned three, my mum set up her first ever community project. It was called Beauty4Ashes. Her main objective was to get young people off the streets by providing them with practical skills and opening their eyes to the world around them. Some of the young people she worked with were either offenders or at risk of offending. Others were teenage mothers or young people not in full-time education or employment. She always brought me along, whether it was cookery classes, interview workshops, money management classes or trips to art galleries.
I feel like her compassion rubbed off on me. And that is what this chapter is about. Giving back. Growing up as I did in communities with clear divides along lines of race, wealth, gender and so much more, the most inspiring and exciting experiences for me were when I was working under, with and for organisations that inspired change and supported the growth and understanding of young people. I wasn’t alone. In 2017 alone, 20.1 million people in the UK volunteered their time through a group, charity or organisation.1 It’s a huge number, but I think it could be higher. Giving back doesn’t necessarily mean working somewhere for free or putting your hand in your pocket. In this chapter I will be talking about the importance of helping others, regardless of the situation you find yourself in.
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My name is Victor Acquah. I work in finance and currently live in south London. I’m also an army officer.
I grew up near Clapham Common and moved to Brixton when I was about ten years old. I think when I moved to Brixton, it really opened my eyes to the challenges of being a young black man or black boy in an inner-city environment. Being in Brixton, you’re in a volatile environment where you have to be very alert and very sharp if you don’t want to get sucked into the system. By the system, I mean the world of drugs, gangs and all the other unhealthy things that can happen in and around any inner-city areas.
My parents wanted me to go to Archbishop Tenison’s School in Oval because it was a religious school and had a good reputation at the time. They thought they were sending me there to escape some of the problems of living in London but, in fact, school was where I found them. It was a tough school. It’s where I got my education, in more ways than one.
There were a lot of fights and a lot of gang activity. Because of the school’s location, kind of in the middle of a few areas, there were kids attending who were affiliated with a variety of gangs. We had the 28s, the Peckham Boys, the Ghetto Boys and one or two others. In that situation, it was almost impossible to opt out – sitting on the fence was a statement in itself and could lead to bullying. So I got together with the Brixton Boys, Stockwell Park and the 28s, because they represented the area I was living in. Back then gangs from the same area sort of got along. You didn’t have that postcode rivalry. If you lived in Brixton, you were in the Brixton gangs. It didn’t matter which really, as long as it was in Brixton. Your enemies weren’t from Brixton – they were the gangs in Peckham or New Cross.
I was getting sucked into the system, but I was lucky enough to grow up at a time when there were lots of opportunities in the local area for me. A lot of youth clubs and youth initiatives, a lot of places generally open and available to young people in south London. These were places you could go to do your homework, to play pool or play on a computer, to buy a cheap meal. A sort of home away from home. A shelter from the streets. I started to go to a lot of youth centres after school with my friends and got to know the people running them quite well. I realised that a lot of them weren’t paid. They weren’t getting nearly enough money from the government to keep the centres open and well run. So many people there did it because they wanted to give back; they wanted to provide an alternative for young people in the area. They knew that talk wasn’t enough. Action mattered. It planted a seed in me. I began to see that change really only comes about if you put in the effort. You can’t sit back and wait for something good to happen.
I loved the youth clubs and the youth centres, but the one thing I was missing was structure. One day, I got talking to one of the older guys at a community centre, and he told me about the cadets. ‘Come along,’ he said. ‘If you don’t like it, you don’t have to come back.’ So I went. I remember being a little nervous. I was on my own and I wasn’t sure what to expect. These are army guys, yeah? What’s going to happen? Are they just going to shout at me and make me do press-ups for an hour?
In some ways, it was exactly like I expected, but in others, it was nothing like that. There was a lot of marching and saluting and plenty of sharp uniforms. But there was no shouting. Everyone was kind. The best way to describe it is as a family. No one really knew me, but I was immediately welcomed in. People took the time to speak to me, and understand a bit about me. I got to watch what went on and I liked a lot of what I saw.
The first thing I was taught was the value of teamwork. As an individual, there’s only so much you can do. In a team, you’re strong. It connected a lot to what I was seeing at school – the need to join up to a gang for security. At cadets, it was something else. We were also taught about community work. For example, you know from a young age that if you see an old lady walking across the road, you should help her. It’s about the benefit that you as an individual can give to somebody else, without demanding something in return. After my first few cadet sessions, I used to wish I could see an old lady in trouble, just so I could run over and help her.
It wasn’t all being a goody-goody. It was assault courses, map-reading, strategy and leadership workshops. I was moving out of my comfort zone and I thrived. The cadets became a very solid thing in my life at a time when everything else was a little less stable.
There was a captain in my unit who was a part of a gang unit at the Metropolitan Police. If he ever met someone in trouble, he would steer them towards cadets and to our unit specifically. You know, the ‘one last chance to turn your life around’. So we used to get a lot of people in our unit who were making some bad choices. Proper bad boys. And cadets did change quite a few of their lives for the better.
People say if you come from a broken home, it determines or sets up your future. But I disagree, because you can come from one-parent families, but if you’ve got a support system in place, like the cadets or an organisation that provides positive role models, you can still succeed. I think that, in this day and age, without that structure, without the right environment, without reminders and reassurances to stay on the right path, it is very easy to get into trouble. Cadets provided that for me. We were told repeatedly what was right and what was wrong. There was no space for confusion. If you did something wrong, you were punished for it. And because we were a unit, a team, any failure was shared. It wasn’t just me letting myself down, it was me letting all of the cadets down. We were a team striving for the same goals, so I knew if I succeeded, we would all succeed.
Cadets set me up for life. I eventually got a very good education at Tenison’s and managed to stay out of trouble. I did well in my exams and got a place at St Francis Xavier sixth form (or SFX), where the business side of me really came out. I was voted onto the student council and eventually became vice president, organising all of our events. We put on a lot of shows, at places like the Colosseum in Vauxhall. We even managed to get So Solid Crew to perform at one of our college dances. This was at the height of their fame. After I left SFX, I went to Kingston University to study Business and Information Technology.
I got a job at Barclays and was pursuing a few personal business projects on the side. Eventually I was introduced to somebody at RBS and from there went into corporate banking. I’m still in the corporate world, but now I deal primarily with governments and NGOs to try and deliver projects in Africa and other parts of the world.
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I can hear you already. ‘We know all this, Jeremiah. We want to help. But where can we start?’ Excellent question! I thought I might begin by looking at some of the organisations that had the biggest impact on me when I was younger. I got my first experience of charity work through my mother, but from as far back as I can remember I somehow got involved with a number of initiatives. I was originally thinking of listing them at the back of the book, but it wouldn’t really do them justice; they really belong in a full chapter about charity. I’m not recommending you go out and get involved with them all, but they are worth looking up at least, to give you a sense of the best way you can start giving back. Charity begins at home, in more ways than one.
One of the grassroots youth organisations I first got to know was the Triangle Adventure Playground in Oval, whose back fence separated it from my secondary school, Archbishop Tenison’s. I first started going when I was very small, with my mum. It’s a wonderful space, right in the heart of London, and one of the oldest children’s charities in the area. This was a space that was another home away from home for me, when I was little. When I was very young, I would play with my brother and sister, giving my mum a well-earned break. When I became a little older, I would go with my friends after school finished, spending summer afternoons in the garden, or learning an activity in the centre.
Despite not being the biggest site, the Triangle is a solid part of the community, providing free lunches and activities in the holidays and looking after dozens of young people after school. Free spaces like these are essential for young people from low socio-economic backgrounds who live on the local housing estates. It not only allows them a place to grow and experiment and be themselves, it also provides much-needed help for working parents who are unable to afford childcare after school or in the holidays. Activities range from group sports games and gardening to indoor arts and crafts and DJ workshops. They also help to develop different life skills with activities such as cookery classes (just like my mum’s), bicycle maintenance workshops and music lessons. The manager Jon is always a welcoming face, even when I run into him years after going to the playground.
The Triangle provides an essential service to the community and has helped generations of young people. However, it has had to fight for many years to stay open, partly due to their location on a prime piece of London real estate. Like many other youth projects, they had their funding cut a few years ago, but thankfully are still open and still going strong.
Fast-forward a few years, and I was beginning to pay attention to the work being done by charities to help young people get back on the right track. Juvenis is a charity that believes every young person deserves another chance. Headed by Winston Goode, Juvenis works to support the most vulnerable young people, especially those at risk of being arrested for being involved in crime. Through engagement in positive activities and one-on-one support, Juvenis keeps young people on the right path by providing advice, support and practical to help them get back into education or into training, employment or volunteering.
I first got to know Juvenis through one of their services, Divert Youth, an intervention programme to prevent young people in the criminal justice system from re-offending. Their team, with Lambeth Council, go and sit down with these young people while they’re in police custody and just talk to them. As simple as it sounds, this act is the first time that many of these youths have been asked about themselves and how they’re doing. This is used as a teachable moment to stop young people becoming first-time entrants into the criminal justice system. Together with the young people and their families, an action plan is created that includes: reintegrating them back into mainstream education, training or an apprenticeship; being assigned a mentor; and enrolment in an extra-curricular activity to divert them from a life of crime. As discussed in the education chapter, it’s clear that interventions where young people are actively engaged and their well-being prioritised are necessary to prevent them from spiralling down a dark path.
There are other local groups taking a more direct approach to helping young people, focusing on the injustice and inequality that can be a root cause of crime. Recently, I saw an ICFree campaign in the middle of Brixton. ICFree are a group of advocates from the Advocacy Academy, a Social Justice Youth Organising Movement in Brixton. Young people who apply to the programme get to put together campaigns on things that they are passionate about. In this case, ICFree put up posters at bus stops around Brixton that highlighted how the Met Police disproportionally police young people of colour. One poster stated that more than half of children in prison are people of colour. These bold posters were then followed up with a protest in Brixton against the racism in schooling and policing. They highlighted the similarities between the internal exclusion (isolation) and expelling of young people of colour from school and the prison system, reiterating how keeping them in a silent room where they aren’t learning doesn’t rehabilitate them at all.
This campaign impressed me because ICFree were saying all the things that I and other young people had realised growing up, but didn’t have the knowledge or vocabulary to speak out against. ICFree weren’t just talking about it among themselves; they were going out on the streets to make sure that other people learned about this too. The Advocacy Academy, which ICFree grew out of, is the first organisation of its kind in the UK, and every year they help to empower a new group of young people to fight against the issues affecting them and their peers. What stands out for me is that this isn’t about doing a one-off campaign and moving on; it’s about teaching young people how to be advocates for life and continually fight against injustice. Their intention is they will not just inherit this mess, they will do something to fix it.
Spiral Skills is another organisation that I’d like to mention. Spiral Skills work with young people in schools and colleges to help them with their education and equip them with the skills and knowledge they need to succeed in the future. They work with young people who are doing their GCSEs but who are at risk of being expelled. Their interventions are designed around the fact that traditional methods of learning don’t work for everyone. They deliver interactive workshops that focus on the career interests of the young people in the group and get them excited about their future. I got to know them through Karl Lokko, whom you met in the business chapter. Karl went to one of their sessions at a secondary school in Brixton and spoke to a class of young people about making positive decisions and holding themselves in higher esteem. This dedication to students who would usually be failed by the school system – in Karl’s session a group made entirely of young black people – is what makes their work so necessary. As Damani stated previously, if there had been somebody to keep him in check or talk to him about how his future might turn out, he may have had an entirely different educational experience.
I can’t finish this section without showing some love for the Hebe Foundation, which helped me to learn some skills so that I could found businesses and support young people. Hebe is a small organisation based in Clapham. They put me together with a group of other young people to create business plans based on what specifications real businesses needed, and then pitch the plan to them. The scheme was named ‘Junior Apprentice’, after the TV show. When we were successful we would be supported to bring some of our ideas to life, or we would do work experience sessions at the company we’d pitched to. There are a lot of reasons this one sticks out in my mind. Their support helped me make amazing friends and learn some of the qualities required for entrepreneurship. In fact, my most notable memory is when we walked into the Northern Trust investment bank for one of the challenges and didn’t have any proper plan for our pitch, so I blagged the whole thing … and we ended up winning, funnily enough! However, more important than that, the reason Hebe is so dear to me now is because of the connections I made there. The team that worked with me became lifelong friends who support me to this day and I have the pleasure, every once in a while, of going back to help the young people who they are supporting now, all these years later.
Finally, as you might have guessed from Captain Acquah’s testimony, there’s the Army Cadets. I was an Army Cadet for most of my teenage life. In brief, the Army Cadets is a national youth group sponsored by the Ministry of Defence (MOD) and the British Army. There’s no actual fighting, you’ll be pleased to hear, but it’s a great way to learn about military life and pick up some vital skills and connections along the way. I took part in a range of subjects from the Army Proficiency Certificate syllabus: navigation (with a map and compass), fieldcraft (learning about the outdoors, setting up harbour areas), shooting (marksmanship principles and how to control a rifle), first aid and more.
There’s one other important aspect of the Army Cadets that stood out for me. It was the fact that all of the adults who were involved – looked after us and taught us – were volunteers. They took their own time out to help all of us young people. They came from a range of professions. The commanding officer of my sector, Colonel Ettingshausen, worked for the MOD and ran his own PR agency. Lieutenant Bambury worked in the events and hospitality sector. Captain Acquah was my unit commander, he was in the banking industry. All of these individuals had busy lives and each had a massive impact on me as a person. I’ve only mentioned three names here but, throughout my early life, I was fortunate to meet a number of talented, intelligent, dedicated and helpful volunteers. I wanted to find out why, with all of their commitments, they still found time to volunteer.
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Sometimes you can seek causes out and sometimes a cause will find you. In 2013, I went to a party that would change my life for ever.
Young Black and Talented was an empowerment project delivered in the Brixton Road Youth Centre. It consisted of weekly meet-ups, outreach events and small-scale projects, all designed to help empower and uplift young women in the area. A lot of my female friends from school went and they often spoke about how inspiring and helpful the sessions were. One afternoon they invited me and some of my friends along to see what was going on. Looking back, I’m not sure why we thought they should (or would) let us boys attend, but luckily for us they did. This was at a time when we didn’t really have anywhere else to go after school (apart from Bricky McDs) and I knew that, for a lot of the girls, the project was a lifeline.
As soon as we arrived, we were roped into helping to organise a Valentine’s Day party they were planning, deliberating over the music and PA system, the lighting, the food, the special guests. We even wrote a song and planned to perform it in front of everyone. Everyone in the ends was invited to the party. A lot of the girls there were from our year in school, so at first we thought it should really only be for young people of our age, but then there was a group of older youths we thought should be there – a few older boys and girls we were friendly with, older brothers and sisters of our group, people we wanted to bring in. One of the key members of that group was a boy named Patrick, who had helped me a lot over the years. After I had been threatened on Facebook, he went out of his way to make me feel safe, walking me back through Brixton most afternoons. Patrick was also someone who got me into a lot of local youth groups and initiatives. We felt that, if anyone deserved to be at the party and get something back, it was Patrick.
The night of the party came and I was feeling nervous. I’d sung in a choir, but I’d never performed in public before, especially not in front of all of my friends. I was also regretting the subject matter of our song. It was all about first love. What was I thinking? Eventually, our time came and we got up on stage and looked around. The whole hall was packed. The beat started and we performed the song as best we could. We got a few claps, but I could see most of our friends laughing away. I didn’t mind though. I was having fun by this point. We carried on playing and partied for several hours, so I missed my curfew. Even though it was a bit raucous and noisy, the adults let us enjoy ourselves, kept a close eye on us and made sure everyone was OK.
I left the event with a girl I had a bit of a crush on. I walked her to the bus stop near her home, where we stood around chatting until my bus arrived. I gave her a big hug and jumped on, immediately spotting a familiar face in the back row. My mum! I quickly looked at the ground and shuffled my way upstairs, expecting the shouting to start at any minute … But it never came. I collapsed into a seat on the top deck. It was the closest miss ever, as I don’t know what she would have done if she had seen me at the bus stop with a girl after my curfew. Mum, if you’re reading this, I’m sorry!
Given everything that had happened, I hadn’t really paid attention to who was at the party and who wasn’t. The following day when I woke up, I remember feeling exhausted from the night before. I was thinking about rolling over and going back to sleep, but for some reason picked up my phone. I had a heap of missed calls and messages. My best friend Whiltz had sent me fifteen ping alerts on Blackberry Messenger. I knew something was wrong. The first message I opened simply said, ‘RIP Patrick.’ I immediately called Whiltz and he told me that Patrick had lost his life in the early hours of the morning. He hadn’t come to the Valentine’s Day party after all. He had gone to a friend’s birthday party at a house in Brixton instead. There had been a fight and he had been stabbed trying to protect his friends.
I was shaken. My immediate thought was, Why? It made no sense. Patrick was a good guy, someone who always helped others. How could this happen to him? I got together with some of my closest friends. Everyone was shaken. Violence was an accepted part of all our lives, but this was something we couldn’t understand. The murder was featured on the BBC news that evening, Patrick’s smiling face beamed into homes across the country. It was too much for me.
With my friends and other young people we knew who were friendly with Patrick, we began to organise an event in Patrick’s memory. It began as a single activity, but soon grew to become a day of events, all aimed at helping young people to thrive. We had a vision of taking over a space in central London, bringing in special guest speakers and securing funding to make it an annual event. We even gave it a name: Youth Empowerment Day. This was us doing something about the situation we found ourselves in. This was us not sitting by, waiting for another tragedy to happen. This was us trying to give back. But it was not to be.
*
Due to a lack of funding, Youth Empowerment Day sadly never happened. After the initial outpouring of grief and outrage, the support gradually fell away. But it gave me the idea for another project. I wanted to create an organisation to help reduce the amount of youth crime in the capital. I wanted to involve young people in the decision-making processes aimed at reducing crime and violence in their communities. I wanted to create a network of smaller groups to more effectively help young people put on events, share information and receive updates on key local decisions. I wanted to put the power back in young people’s hands. A few months after Patrick’s death, I officially launched One Big Community.
We initially held a number of events to raise awareness about the issue of knife crime and youth violence in the capital. We started with One Big Debate, an online debate on Twitter that was driven by young people. We trended number one in the UK as we discussed various different ideas to tackle youth violence. All of a sudden, something which had existed only in my head had become a reality. And what’s more, the conversations were moving towards real change. People were moving beyond general problems and causes to consider what they could do now, in their area. I was so happy. Out of the grief of Patrick’s death something good was emerging.
We held various other events, residential activities and even a debate at City Hall in London. We called it the Wall of Silence; an opportunity for young people to speak directly to a panel of decision-makers from the world of politics, the media, business and healthcare. We felt that opportunities for people in power to hear directly from the people whose lives their decisions were affecting were few and far between. We recognised a wall of silence between the panellists and the young people. This event was a chance to break that silence. Soon after, we were invited to host the Youth Justice Convention, which led to a few of us addressing the prime minister and MPs directly in the Houses of Parliament.
In the time following Patrick’s death, youth activism had become my world. It is a feeling like no other to create a platform for young people’s voices to be heard, while also helping the people in power to see the reality behind the news headlines. I saw how much we were able to do with so little, and began to picture what might be possible if we could scale up the organisation significantly. But I was also frustrated. We were being heard, on the biggest stages possible, but little was actually being done. I was being invited to the same events, the same panels, the same discussions, but there was minimal action from the government or local authorities. We were still being targeted by the police. Youth services were still nonexistent. No meaningful investment was being made in the communities that needed it the most. I was fifteen at this point but, as passionate and dedicated as I was, I was also exhausted. There was little room in my life for anything else and I knew I either had to take a step up and see what else could be done, or take a step back and finish school.
I moved on from One Big Community just before I turned sixteen. It was an incredible journey, from start to finish. I had seen young people come together to change public policy, to bring together communities, to try and save lives and so much more. I found a way to address some of the most important issues facing young people today, using young people – people with burning desires and comprehensive skills – to make meaningful change. For all the frustration, I had learned a valuable lesson. I had the power to influence change. It was our time to be heard.
*
Eventually I re-joined the cadets and became a captain myself. It was a simple decision. I wanted to give back.
I think people of colour in the UK have a particularly hard time. I’m not just talking about black people. Institutional racism is real. So in order to succeed we need to help each other. If we don’t help each other, then maybe one person will succeed, but we really need whole communities to succeed. I used to have the mindset that you should only do something if you’re getting properly compensated for it. It took a while for me to change that. What matters more is the good you’re putting out into the world.
The seed that was planted grew. I thought I could offer something back. You know, I remembered that there were people at the community centres when I was growing up who were knowledgeable. You had the IT gurus, you had the people who could help with university applications, you had people who worked in social services who knew what to do in certain situations. You had people you knew you could speak to who, for the most part, would offer good advice and not judge or belittle you. I know I’m banging on about this a bit, but you really can’t place a value on that for young people growing up in difficult circumstances. Instead of a trusted adult, children are finding that person in the wrong places. I knew a lot about the world of finance and I also wanted to help. I thought I could become that person who listens.
We never turn anyone away. If you try, you are in. We’re an inclusive unit in the sense that, even if you are described as ‘difficult’ or ‘troubled’ in some way, we will always try to help you. At cadets, you are part of something much bigger, part of a family. We get that you may not be the cleverest person in the classroom. We get that you’re not in the popular clique. But at cadets, you belong. You are always part of the family.
I mean, I have heard stories about domestic violence. I’ve heard stories about extreme poverty and homelessness. I’ve heard stories about drug abuse or young people being groomed by gangs, doing stuff that could get them a lengthy custodial sentence or even killed. I’ve seen kids with real anger issues as a result of what’s going on at home. People don’t really see that. Teachers don’t see that. Politicians don’t see that. I’m not a social worker. It’s not really my job to help a family get back on its feet. Sometimes they don’t want it. I’ve tried to help before and it’s backfired. But through my work with the cadets, I can really help young people.
The issues the young people I work with face are a lot worse today than when I was growing up. There are a lot more gang issues, especially in London, and there’s a lot more violence. I know I’m going to sound old now, but back in the day, we used to sort things out with our fists. Maybe someone would know someone with a gun, but it was not as common as it is today. Now, everybody has knives. That’s the minimum, you know. A lot more people have access to guns, handguns and some people even have access to automatic rifles. And these crimes are messages. ‘Leave my crew alone or this is going to happen to you.’ That’s why some of these stabbings and shootings are so gruesome and so awful. Some of these gangs are making serious money. I’ve seen boys with £50,000 chains, £20,000 watches. Driving expensive cars, posting about their riches on social media. You can’t do that without having the armoury to back it up. Gone are the days when you could have a moped and be the top boy of the block.
I care because I’ve seen the effects of drugs, I’ve seen the effects of gangs, I’ve seen the effects of violence. I’ve seen good people who I went to school with turn out to be drug addicts, begging on the streets, losing their minds. Mental illness is something that is prevalent in our society, but we don’t talk about it that much, you know? So I’ve seen a lot of good people who I’ve laughed with and kicked a football about with go the wrong way. And because they’ve gone the wrong way, their kids are now on a bad path. We know that if the streets haven’t got them already, the drug dealers and other bad influences, then maybe we can get in there first and influence them to follow the right path. We’re trying to suck you into our system, before you can get sucked into the other one.
There have even been occasions when some of the kids have gone back to gangs and we’ve had to pull them out. Some of the kids we work with have real anger issues. For them, it’s a point of principle to disobey orders. I know some of the gang leaders and think they have a little bit of respect for me, so I’ve been able, once or twice, to pull someone back. You see some people arrive and you think, ‘Oh my gosh, is this person going to survive?’ But then ten years later they’re settled, they have children, they’re in a good job and you know deep down that it’s the cadets that have put them on the right path.
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My first ever proper job was as a youth consultant at Big Change. Big Change is a charitable organisation that exists to ‘reimagine education’, by no means a small goal. Their conversations and research revolve around what education really means, what it should mean, and what support organisations need to make the real changes that will transform the lives of young people across the UK. I first got involved with them when I was just sixteen on their ‘growth mindset’ research and campaign. The Big Change team was looking at how having the right mindset can drastically change how we learn. One of the most important things in this book for me is the exploration I make of the paradigms through which people look at the world, and how this affects their actions. The growth mindset research we explored is a fundamental part of understanding that. Instead of viewing events and failures as the full extent of what we can achieve and letting that define us (which is known as a fixed mindset), Big Change thoroughly explored a vastly superior paradigm: the growth mindset. In contrast to thinking that you can’t change your situation, with a growth mindset, you believe that you always have the room to learn, change and improve your skills and abilities. With a true growth mindset, you don’t just accept that things are the way they are; instead, you challenge them and use any failures as an opportunity to grow. You might seek feedback, take time to reflect or seek new opportunities at every turn; these are all characteristics of someone with a strong growth mindset.
I would say that this mentality is true of young people today or, at least, of a lot of the young people I have been able to support and interact with. However, this piece of research only came about because we felt that too many young people didn’t believe in themselves, or thought they couldn’t change the situations they were born into, and that the education system should be helping to resolve that. This idea is the foundation for much of the work I’ve done in the years since, to inspire young people and work with organisations which support and uplift those who might be left behind.
I was so inspired by Big change’s mission that I helped them to establish their Youth Advisory Board and continued working with them behind the scenes to ensure their work reached as many young people as possible. At the age of sixteen, myself and eleven other young people representing several organisations came together in the Virgin head offices in London, where Big Change are based, to learn about their work, contribute to it, scrutinise it, and take all of that back to our communities.
My main takeaway from my time with Big Change, other than understanding education more holistically and what a growth mindset is (two sizeable things in themselves), is the togetherness and energy that is facilitated by a strong youth board. This is the main reason I love setting them up for other organisations – because the potential impact on the institution and on the lives of those young people is absolutely mind-blowing. It’s that energy that I want to see and inspire more of, because I truly believe that the way to encourage more cohesive and diverse work is by bringing people together in such a way, to break down barriers and contribute to organisations that are already having a meaningful impact. Finally, one of the people I met on the Big Change youth board was Seven Jacobs, now a close friend and business partner of mine. At the time, we were just young people on a youth board together, but over time we began working together more closely. That’s made a great impact on me.
So what has working with all these different groups shown me? One thing is that a huge amount of power for change can be generated in a very short amount of time if young people are allowed to mix socially and be socially mobile, because that is when the explosion of ideas and energy is at its peak – when diversity is allowed to flourish. I’ve also had my eyes opened wide to the strength that young people have to change the world through activism. With the right mindset, one in which your situation is not fixed and you can improve, and the right environment – where different people with different ideas and experiences can come together to get good work done – the potential goes beyond changing just local communities. It creates a real will to influence policies, views, institutions and governments, as well as family, friends and schools. Therefore, it is the power to change the world for the better.
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I think volunteering should be compulsory. Imagine what society would be like if everyone gave a bit of their free time to help others. Imagine the skills and experience young people could access and make use of. I strongly believe that, as much as you take from society, you need to give back. I would be lost if it wasn’t for the cadets, so I see it as my duty and my privilege to help other young people. Social responsibility should be taught in schools.
What I’ve seen emerge in all of the cadets we’ve worked with is leadership. It’s strength. It’s the confidence to act on your beliefs and do the right thing. It’s a can-do attitude. I’ve been so impressed with so many of the young people we’ve worked with – young people who, when they joined, couldn’t look us in the eye, and then a year or two later they are delivering presentations in front of 200 people, making people laugh, helping the younger cadets, showing care and compassion, leading by example. It’s a wonderful thing. This is a cliché, but they are people of integrity. The cadets didn’t create that integrity, they just helped to bring it forwards. These are young people you can trust. Young people you know won’t let you down.
We are helping at the source. This is not just cadets I’m talking about now, this is youth projects and volunteers who work with young people in general. If we can ease the pressure of struggling families, that’s a good thing. If we can help young people to become decent citizens, then that’s a good thing. That work is repaid. Those young people can inspire others. It’s about developing people so they can get to a position where they can make a positive difference to their community.
It’s about giving back. You cannot succeed on your own. Somebody was there for you in order for you to get to where you are. I think it’s important to realise that you didn’t get there by yourself. Humility is important. When you volunteer, you get a satisfaction or a certain gratification from it because you can see the difference you’ve made. You’ve helped somebody get from A to B. That’s better than any pay cheque. There’s a joy in seeing someone who had come into cadets as a shy person transform and leave sure of themselves. Bumping into this confident person later in life and finding out they’re thriving when they could have gone sideways, that fills me with happiness.
For me personally, I feel like this is the way to get to young people. And if you can do a good job with one young person, then it can only benefit the community because there’s the school of thought that they will tell somebody else and that person will tell somebody else and then it grows organically. You know, word of mouth is a very powerful communication tool.
Across the UK, we’re seeing the poor getting poorer and the rich getting richer. The social divide is starker now that it’s ever been, I believe. And I can’t see it getting any better. I’m not going to pretend that I have the solutions either. The cadets aren’t going to pull someone out of poverty or stand in for what’s really missing in young people’s lives. But what they can offer is an opportunity.
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So, why did I spend so many pages just describing youth organisations that I care about? It comes down to the pieces of learning that I took from every single one of them and how they contributed to my understanding the potential of youth activism. I see my teenage years as a puzzle where, with each significant new experience and organisation, I discovered a new piece that I could use to complete the bigger picture.
Having a growth mindset; re-imagining education; social mobility; enterprising experience; equal opportunity; community development. These are the ideas that stick out in my mind when I think about change. Here is how each one of them contributes to a recipe for successful change:
Growth mindset: If you as an individual decide that, no matter your circumstances, current skills or past events, you are going to make a difference, then you will. If you have a fixed mindset instead and believe that you can’t change anything, then you won’t – because you’ll never work to make it happen. Easier said than done, I realise, but a simple shift in attitude can make the world of difference.
Education: Too often, we confuse what education is for what our education system looks like, which at the moment doesn’t work for everyone. Instead, we should be thinking about constantly educating ourselves and those around us and contributing to expanding opportunities to learn beyond the academic world of school and homework. In this way, what we learn in and out of school will be the things that we need to ‘thrive in life, not just in exams’, as Big Change would put it.
Social mobility: If the last two qualities were things you can do within yourself or decisions you can make about your own life, then this is about taking that outside of yourself and bringing different people together who want to put their unique qualities to good use. Instead of seeing differences as things that divide us, view them as opportunities to learn something new or to develop skills from, which you can then mix into your own work and personal life. At the end of the day, there is nothing more similar to one human being than another; we will always have more in common than not, but we can learn from the differences that do exist, gaining new skills and perspectives, which we can carry into every piece of work we do and every relationship we create and foster.
Enterprise: Young people in today’s modern world are naturally very enterprising, utilising creativity, innovative ideas and collaboration to create solutions, rather than just talking about problems. This is what I believe will fundamentally allow us to actually make the changes that our activism promotes.
Equal opportunity: As history has shown us, it is a real and ongoing struggle to overcome the divisions and inequalities around us. But we can push to make this happen, by banding together to get the hard work done and, through our everyday decisions, to advocate for others. Include other people, get them involved, ask them their opinions and work to make sure everyone is treated fairly. Your activism could include people of all backgrounds to make sure of this, or it could highlight injustices that particular groups face. But getting diverse people from all sections of society together is what will make that change happen, so ensure that everyone gets the opportunity to participate and contribute. Perhaps you could even bring totally different communities together to make something happen!
Community development: Bringing together people who unite over certain issues enables them to show their collective passion for a cause – and without passion, nothing will be achieved. Connect your communities – local, school, online or otherwise – so that everyone is prepared to make change together. Then you can expand your movement from there! For example, the climate change movements that have exploded over the last year of writing this book, which have been led through online communities, have been able to harness the support of the global community in a very short time! Just think outside the box about how you can get this done.
So, to every young person reading this, I want you to understand one thing. I’m not going to tell you to go build or find these qualities, because you need to do what is right for you in your own life. I would, however, encourage you to understand them and the potential they have to change your life and the lives of those around you, because the feeling that comes from successfully changing to incorporate them is incredible. And, to everyone reading this who has young people in their lives, no matter who they are or what community they are a part of, I want you to find ways of bringing these qualities into their lives to help them reach their goals and achieve their dreams. And, of course, there is also nothing stopping you from adopting these qualities yourself.