Ambassador Spotlights: September 2021

Founded in 2020, Project Orasight is a youth-driven initiative that aims to raise awareness for Orbis’s Flying Eye Hospital and the threat of visual impairment worldwide. It does this through the core aims of Awareness, Advocacy, and Fundraising.

Much of the campaigning takes place on social media platforms, whereby the organisation publishes and promotes educational messages to the public. Notable campaigns include the “Do or D(Eye)” Video series - a collection of short films documenting the challenges and real-life experiences of visually impaired individuals, as well as “Eye Need to Know”: a series of Instagram posts on common eye conditions.

As a result of the work, 100 youths have joined to fight against preventable blindness. Through outreach efforts, they have managed to reach an estimated 12,000 individuals. Upcoming initiatives include Race4Sight - a virtual race where participants run 100km or cycle 500km to raise funds and awareness for Orbis - and Project Orasight: The Concert - a live concert fundraiser. You can donate to Orbis International (Singapore) here.

Taylor founded the lean consulting company to empower entrepreneurs in the countries with the most broken food systems with the supply chains, products, and knowledge to run sustainable food companies whose collective mission is to achieve Zero Hunger by 2030 through nutritious, delicious, food products that families can find and purchase in their local markets.

Tailored Food is on a mission to build sustainable food systems that provide nutritious, delicious, culturally relevant food products at a price that families in extreme poverty can afford. In Liberia, this looks like a line of flavoured cassava-based porridge fortified with a complete vitamin and mineral profile. In Congo, it looks like a line of flavoured cassava-based snack “bars” fortified and flavoured and packaged in locally harvested banana leaves instead of plastic.

Ingredients are sourced from smallholder farmers, manufacturing equipment from local machine shops, and everything is operated by locally owned businesses, employing mostly women. The business has sold food for 3.5 years in Liberia and 1 year in Congo. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has funded a research study measuring the impact of this model in Liberia, with a research study published that showed that 77% of consumers living in extreme poverty viewed the product we developed as ‘extremely affordable,’ with the other 23% viewing the product as ‘affordable'.

Pink Parliament is an initiative by Life In Leggings: Caribbean Alliance Against Gender-based Violence in collaboration with The Barbados Youth Development Council and in partnership with the The University of the West Indies, Open Campus – Women & Development Unit. The initiative seeks to inspire and encourage girls and young women between the ages 14-20 to pursue careers in politics and to lead unapologetically.

Pink Parliament equips participants with the tools to be bold and effective advocates through professional training, mentorship and networking sessions with women in politics and leadership. The vision is to increase the participation of women in politics by raising consciousness and cultivate in this generation, young feminist leaders who are ready to champion the issues that they are passionate about and/or affect them. Young feminist leaders who have a desire to redefine male-dominated political and decision-making spaces.

To date, the program has accepted 80 girls in Barbados in 2 years at the rate of 6-8 months each of engagement per year. They secured a partnership with the High Commission of Canada in Barbados which allows for mentorship and informal engagement by the High Commissioner to expand the knowledge of possible career opportunities in diplomacy. The girls toured Parliament and were invited to the Upper and Lower Houses of Parliament to hear legislation being debated and bills being passed, were acknowledged by the President of the Senate, met the Prime Minister of Barbados, The Honourable Mia Amor Mottley, Q.C., M.P, and were invited to lunch by Ministers and Senators at Parliament to discuss their interest in politics and the rights of women and girls.

Youth Educational Forum (YEF) is one of the most experienced youth organisations in North Macedonia, founded in 1999, now working on a national and international level. Annually, YEF works with over 1,000 young people through 4 core programmes: Debate, Street Law, Youth Activism, and Program for Research & Analysis of Youth Policies. A decade ago, RadioMOF, the first online youth medium was founded within the programme for Youth Activism. RadioMOF is still one of the main sources for youth informing and critical debate on current happenings.

The organisation is member-based, with a general assembly of 80-100 members, mainly high school students, university students and young experts. Every academic year the organisation creates and updates educational curricula that promotes youth participation, trains critical thinking, communication with the national institutions and protection of human rights.

Besides the clubs for debate, human rights, youth activism and journalism, in the last 3 years, YEF provides student clubs for high-school students with disabilities, empowering them to actively participate in democratic processes in their schools and municipalities. YEF is one of the rare organisations that work on research and creation of propositions for tailor-made youth policies, improving the youth standard and quality of education in North Macedonia.

Shree Shankheshwar Free Vaccination Center was responsible for providing free vaccination to tackle the spread of Covid-19 throughout the local population of Surat in Gujarat and the surrounding areas. It was opened on 27th June 2021 and to date has successfully vaccinated more than 15,000 people with either a first or second dose, according to the guidelines established by the Government of India.

To celebrate "Doctors' Day" and show gratitude for what healthcare staff have done during these challenging times a celebration was organised. In addition, the vaccination centre has conducted activities to create sustainability awareness including the distribution of 1,000+ free crops. The team also travelled 400km to provide free vaccinations for the Jain Sadhus, an order of monks in Palitana, which was well received by the community and national media.

There are two other functional vaccination centres that have vaccinated more than 18,000+ people that are co-managed by the group. The centres remain operational 10 am to 4 pm every day, providing 300+ daily vaccinations.

#Reform 53 is an advocacy campaign calling for the leaders of all 54 Commonwealth countries to reform laws that discriminate against women and girls and LGBT+ people, many of which are a colonial legacy. Leading up to the 2021 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, #Reform53 aims to spark conversations, commitments and actions towards achieving five main objectives: decriminalising same-sex relationships; reforming consent laws on forced marriage and removing clauses that defer to customary laws; ensuring provisions in the law for abortion by choice; ending workplace discrimination for women & girls and LGBT+ people; increased political participation for women and LGBT+ people.

During the campaign launch week in January 2020, the team met with the relevant High Commissioners as well as Commonwealth Secretariat representatives of Youth, Rule of Law and Human Rights divisions. They successfully lobbied 3 High Commissioners and 2 divisions to support them. In February, the campaign was presented to the Equality and Justice Alliance Forum in Seychelles and She Decides festival in Uganda. Around 6,000 people pledged to support the campaign. In March, the team presented the campaign to the UN Secretary-General's Envoy on Youth at the International Women’s Day dialogue in Papua New Guinea who backs the campaign. They collected 2,600 pledges from empowerment workshops in Barbados, Mauritius, Kenya, Bangladesh and Cameroon. In the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak, in April, the team launched a webinar series that has garnered more than 100,000 views and engaged more than 300,000 people.

To demonstrate to leaders that civil society demands legal reform, the team requests that supporters share a selfie with the campaign logo on their palms via social media. At the 2021 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, the campaign’s qualitative and quantitative impact stories and statistics further advocate for legal reform.

Lydia is an Autism & mental health advocate from Perth on the Autism Spectrum, herself struggling with the challenges of mental health. Lydia became an advocate in 2019 after graduating from the Sylvia Rodgers Academy's Future Leaders Program. Her primary goal is to educate and inform mental health professionals on the specific needs of autistic adults.

There is a substantial lack of services for disabled people in accessing mental health care in Australia. Lydia advocates that there should be a specialist developmental disability stream in the Australian mental health services, considering the number of autistic people that also have a co-occurring mental illness. Her advocacy work has included speaking at the West Australian Suicide prevention forum and as a member of the Consumer for Mental Health Systemic Advocacy Council.

This month, Lydia has the opportunity to go to Western Australia's (WA) Parliament House to sit down and talk with the Minister for Disability, Don Punch, to discuss the need for better mental health outcomes for Autistic adults. From this meeting, the Minister for Disability is approaching the Chief Psychiatrist of WA to discuss the need for reform and the need for policy change surrounding access to affordable adult Autism assessments.

Afro-Arab Microfinance Company Limited is a microfinance company that was established a decade ago by Alhaji, a young and dynamic man who grow from a deprived community in Ghana. It aims to operate the business of microfinance and help people from deprived communities (Zongo) and inner cities who are lacking access to funds for their business, hence financial inclusion.

The Afro-Arab Microfinance Company has two offices and over 50 employees who work tirelessly to serve 10,000 customers. The theme for its 10 year anniversary is 'Women & Youth Empowerment', the core principle of the organisation's work.

As it grows in reach, it is working to assist rural communities by helping farmers and traders with financial literacy training, capacity building and funding with its partners at Ecobank Ghana (Elevate Women Project), Esoko , usaid , Zobi , Afyef and Sptf.

On the 1st April 2017, in Mocoa Putumayo, a selection of university students created Jovenes Voluntarios De Putumayo, a group led by Samanta Fajardo Navarro. After the torrential flood on the 31st March 2017, the group managed humanitarian aid for the municipality of Mocoa and worked with governmental and non-governmental bodies on a reforestation initiative to mitigate risk in informal settlements.

The group organises activities and campaigns to support the local community. This includes the “Regalatón De Sonrisas” that takes place every December. The group collects new and second-hand gifts, and repairs broken toys, for a donation to children in villages and informal settlements. At the beginning of the year between January 20th-29th, the group collects school supplies and clothes for the ‘Educational Smiles’ campaign. These are just two examples of the activities carried out by the group on a regular basis, which have benefited approximately 10,000 children to date.

Samanta also coordinates work supporting indigenous communities and Afro-Colombians displaced by the armed conflict. Together with Tepes, a research incubator group, and as a coordinator for ‘Territorio Espacio Público Emergente y Arquitectura Social’, Samanta has started participatory design workshops within the communities. These workshops take into account the basic needs for the legalisation and titling of the land on which they are settled. These accompany projects to gain the trust of the community, which have benefited more than 5,000 families in Putumayo.

The OYW Switzerland Caucus 2021 brought together over 200 young changemakers online and 50 together in person to collaborate for sustainable change. Bühler's internal movement GenerationB, in association with Arosa Tourism, held a 2-day event with the aim to discuss what it tangibly looks like to make change for a more sustainable world.

Discussions took place in partnership with the startup accelerator, MassChallenge, on what it means to build a sustainable company from the beginning. The event also explored how to make change in an existing company through grassroots movements, like GenerationB, and how to influence an industry - particularly how to facilitate more sustainable Tourism. The event was kick-started in North America, with colleagues from GenerationB organising a programme from their Minneapolis office, which was continued in Switzerland with a day of live input that was simultaneously streamed online, and then continued to Arosa, where a smaller delegation worked in the mountains to take the input from the previous events and turn it into action.

The aim of the event was to convene a diverse group of people and spark collaboration on projects working towards a more sustainable world. In the first stream, attendees gave direct feedback to the strategy of MassChallenge Switzerland and supported in developing this. In the second stream, they discussed how to start grassroots movements, and several of the attendees are now working on applying this in their own organisations. Finally, in the third stream, several ideas for projects were presented to Arosa Tourism on how the company could encourage more sustainable tourism.

The Knowmad Institut was founded by Daniela Kreher and Martin Díaz in 2018. It has an international team of 20 multidisciplinary experts, an expert committee and an ethics committee, with an active presence in Europe, America, Africa and Asia, and has been recognised by the German federal government as an institution of public interest for science and research.

Its vision is to contribute to the promotion and fulfilment of the SDGs and thus to contribute to the construction of a sustainable, fair and multipolar world. They strengthen and complement the promotion and protection of human rights and dignity in civil initiatives, public policies and private projects, under scientific rigour and multidisciplinary vision.

The organisation analyses reliable information in a comprehensive and multidisciplinary approach that facilitates knowledge management, to educate and disseminate bold and innovative proposals that promote common solutions to global problems.

With this, they build bridges between civil society, academia, states, and the private sector. The construction of a solid evidence base allows the organisation to better support decision-makers, opinion leaders and lobby/advocacy groups to explore and promote innovative initiatives based on human dignity, facts, and science.

Adam founded BetProtect with his father David, a former gambling addict. Inspired by their family's experience, Adam and his father started the Safer Online Gambling Group as a starting point which led to them launching an application to protect other people from descending into a similar addiction.

BetProtect is an innovative player awareness space that includes tools and professional advice to help you understand your relationship with gambling. It is a web app available for integration with gaming and gambling operators on both mobile and desktop, designed in conjunction with leading therapists and counsellors.

In August this year, the brand and products were acquired by Crucial Compliance, a consultancy in Gibraltar that aims to substantially spread the reach of this vital application and work with High Street betting and gaming companies to integrate the product globally.

Within Bloomberg Media, Charlie is a Client Services Lead and specialist in sustainability and ESG, entrusted to lead commercial partnerships for Bloomberg Green and Bloomberg New Economy.

Bloomberg Green is a multiplatform editorial brand focused on climate change news, analysis, and solutions. Launched in January 2020, Bloomberg Green includes a new website featuring a global, interactive climate data dashboard, a daily email newsletter, a podcast, and a magazine. Meanwhile, Bloomberg New Economy enables global leaders to come together to collaborate on solutions to shared challenges, establish deep personal connections, and chart the course toward a new economy with a sustainable, inclusive future. The community possesses 750+ of the world’s most influential CEOs, leaders, visionaries, scientists, entrepreneurs, and policymakers; alongside 100 million global viewers seeking our trusted content.

Charlie is the co-lead of the Women’s Community NY at Bloomberg, focused on empowering and inspiring women and allies at every level and business unit within Bloomberg. They deliver professional development programs, industry-leading initiatives and actively promote inclusive policies and benefits; advancing gender equality both at Bloomberg and beyond. Additionally, Charlie participates in the Global Sustainability Squad to discuss how the company evolves and develops the sustainability of the Bloomberg LP business office environment and sustainable practices; embedding sustainability into the day-to-day of the business.

Charlie is proud to be a One Young World Ambassador, attending her first summit in London in 2019. Which is where she had the honour to meet Dr. Jane Goodall and hear her speak about her lifelong career working with some of the most endangered species on Earth, and the balance between the treatment of animals and the health of the planet.