June 2020: Ambassador of the Month

Maria founded the Life Academy in March 2019, an organisation offering a reliable leadership programme for children in Colombia, aged 12 to 18, to support their mental wellbeing. The project is training 300 students in its leadership workshops in two cities through a digital platform, built in response to Covid-19. It has delivered leadership conferences to 1,500 students from an underprivileged socioeconomic background. At-risk participants have registered a 50% decrease in suicidal thoughts. Additionally, 80% of the children report feeling more confident, or healthier, and 55% of young people believe they are or can be leaders.

Salvemos Vidas is a movement within Life Academy where young people can join to volunteer to call other young people to talk every week. The movement was created one month ago and 100 people have joined.

Aushim is Founder and Operations Lead of Florence Energy Limited, operating in Australia, Thailand and India. It designs, builds and operates state-of-the-art “plastic to fuel” energy facilities, with the aim of improving accessibility to clean and renewable energy. Additionally, the company is in the process of implementing a biomass-to-ethanol facility.

An estimated 40,000 families have benefited directly and indirectly, as each site mitigates the prevalence of plastic waste in the local neighbourhood, and improves waste management practices.

Kadri has dedicated her professional and personal life to a healthcare mission. As a regulatory affairs specialist at Novartis, Kadri collaborates with health authorities and uses her pharmaceutical expertise to ensure information about medicinal products reach high quality and patient safety standards. She supports the small Baltic markets to maintain and gain access to innovative, lifesaving medicines.

Through the One Young World Healthcare Working Group, Kadri has connected with other like-minded healthcare enthusiasts, using their collaboration to pursue impact in their industry and field. She has contributed to the group’s blog with an article titled “The Essentials of a Home Pharmacy”, which you can read here.

Matthew is the Chief Liaison Officer at Hout Bay Volunteer EMS, a community emergency ambulance service which was established back in 1994. The organisation and its volunteers are committed to improving the access to emergency healthcare and training community members in first aid. It achieves this by running an emergency ambulance over weekends and public holidays, in conjunction with the Western Cape Dept. Health Emergency Medical Service.

In the past 5 years the organisation has responded to over 3000 emergency medical incidents, and 95% of recipients to their service are significantly socio-economically disadvantaged. Each call attended to by the organisation's volunteers allows the provincial EMS ambulances to respond to other pending calls.

My Community My Concern is an initiative born in March 2019, when the first Covid-19 cases were confirmed in Kenya, and people were asked to observe essential, safety measures to prevent the spread, including a lockdown.

The initiative is built around sensitising the local community about Covid-19, and supporting them to deal with the pandemic. Mary and the team have helped over 100 households with this vital awareness, provided protective face masks to at least 50 households, and distributed food to over 62 families.

Librae is the network for female students in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics), with the goal to promote gender equality and stimulate diversity by supporting female students.

To ensure female students get the most out of their time at university, are confident and well prepared when they enter the job market, the organisation has set up a network to support female students in STEM. In November 2019, the Librae organised its first event for 50 students and 18 role models, facilitating social and professional connections between the young, female students and the role models.

Stefan is the President of the Movement for Cooperation and Development of Youth (MCDY). It uses three primary channels to generate impact. It offers 60 hour training programmes. It offers lectures and career support. It organises small community development projects with participants from these programmes..

MCDY uses these programmes to develop socially responsible young leaders with practical knowledge to continue spreading impact in their communities. Participants of the lectures have received offers from prestigious multinationals on salaries which are on average 70% higher than the average salary in their countries.

Gonzalo is the LATAM Regulatory Affairs Manager at Bristol Myers Squibb. To promote inclusion in the workplace to people with intellectual disabilities, he has led a partnership with the Down Syndrome Association in Argentina (ASDRA).

The company has established a programme to include people with intellectual disabilities in the workplace, and BMS Argentina has hired a person that was trained by the association. This has helped to make the company environment more diverse, and in collaboration with training sessions for employees it has also helped to create a more inclusive environment in the workplace.

Gasore is co-founder and CEO of JulieCare Social Enterprise, and organisaiton which seeks to simultaneously produce personal protective equipment in African countries while providing jobs for jobless Africans. Gasoree credits the OYW Summit in 2016 with directing his attention to social entrepreneurship as a solution to put “Africans on the map”.

JulieCare aims to empower people in remote communities by helping them use their skills and talents to generate income and support their own families. Currently, the organisation works with more than 30 tailors in Dzaleka refugee camp in Malawi producing reusable protective masks. To date, the team has produced 4,000 masks for the United Development Program in Malawi, and produced 6,000 masks for the Malawi Muslim Association.