One Young World Ambassadors are leading projects in every country of the world, creating substantial social impact across all 17 Sustainable Development Goals. Every month our Coordinating Ambassadors select someone from their region who has created significant social impact locally, regionally or even worldwide. We are delighted to feature a selection of these exceptional young leaders below. If you would like to be considered, please reach out directly to your Coordinating Ambassador. Unsure who is your Coordinating Ambassador? See the breakdown of countries here
Girish Ananthanarayanan, India - Peepul
Girish works as COO and Director of Peepul, a non-profit with the dream to create a world where every child is enabled and supported to reach their full potential. It works closely with the public school system to transform learning and improve learning outcomes. The team has refined a four-part model of systemic transformation that helps improve learning outcomes in government schools.
In May 2020, it began the CM Rise programme, in partnership with the School Education Department. Designed and launched as a COVID response, it aims to support and to train the 300,000 teachers in Madhya Pradash during the pandemic, supporting 9.5 million students. To date, 296,000 Government schoolteachers across Madhya Pradesh have enrolled in the digital teaching courses with a 95%+ course completion rates. Cumulatively, CM Rise has delivered 4 million+ learning hours, with a cumulative 4.5 million+ course completions. In the next stage of the project, they are strengthening teacher development holistically, through training, coaching and performance management.
Nabila Putri Salsabila, Indonesia - Student Energy
Nabila serves Student Energy as Southeast Asia and the Pacific Regional Coordinator for the Global Youth Energy Outlook project, bridging the gap between young people and policymakers. The Outlook will convey insights drawn from 50,000+ global youth’s voices on the energy transition, along with a demanded course of action at political, technological, financial, and societal levels. The findings, a regional roadmap, time-bound milestones, and corresponding actions items, will be presented at COP26.
This data is being collected via a questionnaire examining the energy transition in the different countries and regions being surveyed. The other collection tool is a series of regional dialogues. In the REN21 dialogue, Nabila discussed green economic recovery post-COVID-19 in ASEAN. With the Leadership Group for Industry Transition from Stockholm Environment Institute, she explored the role and perspectives of youth on heavy industry transition. Through this project, Nabila is engaging 5,000+ youth in Southeast Asia and the Pacific.
Jubilante Cutting, Guyana - The Guyana Animantion Network
The Guyana Animation Network (GAN) Inc. is a non-profit organisation based in Guyana that provides digital and creative skills training, opportunities, and resources to children and youth in Guyana, the Caribbean and diaspora communities. With a combined vision and mission to lead, activate, and contribute to change in Guyana’s creative and digital industries, GAN has trained over 400 children and youth, including 196 girls in ICT, entrepreneurship and management skills.
The Guyana Animation Network has hosted annual digital summer camps since its launch in 2016, in which young people have learnt a range of skills such as comic art design, 2D animation, 3D and virtual-reality game development and design, stop motion animation, digital painting, character design, design for business marketing and app design and prototyping. In 2020, a grant opportunity and partners allowed GAN to support frontline workers by providing 806 3D-printed face shields and to sponsor access to digital training and digital training technology to 50 young participants and to 10 children, respectively.
Leopoldo Forero, Colombia - COL5VID
Resulting from the state-enforced lockdown in Colombia, a vast number of people lost their jobs and have been forced to live under the minimum wage. In reaction, Leopoldo co-founded the COL5VID initiative to support vulnerable families by bringing food and other basic necessities to their tables. COL5VID is a network of young professionals and students. They connect donors with beneficiaries efficiently and transparently. Since the inception of the campaign, they have raised more than 570 million pesos ($160,000), helping more than 100,000 people across 17 departments in Colombia.
They created a coalition of national and international allies who support promote the mission and donate funds, distributed as monthly packages of food and necessities. The team also collects in-kind donations from households across Colombia and distribute them in vulnerable neighbourhoods. To this date, we have collected more than 50 tons of in-kind donations.
Merten Witte, Switzerland - DSM: The Tomato Project
Merten and a collaborative of DSM employees and One Young World Ambassadors created a new project, with the aim of using tomato waste to tackle malnutrition. After two years of progress, “Tomato Project” has resulted in a commercial product, resulting from a unique collaboration between DSM, Nurevas, the team’s industrial partner in Ghana, Sight & Life, a humanitarian foundation, and ETH Zurich, their academic partner.
Tomato Sauce presents for most African countries as a widely used stable food, which is difficult to fortify due to its high acidity level. In this project, a fortification and production strategy for tomato sauce was developed to support the immune system of HIV positive patients, to help the lung function recovery of Covid-19 patients, as well as to close the gaps of malnourished or vegetarian diet in Africa. The fortified tomato sauce contains Vitamins A, E, B1, B2, B6, B12, D as well as Iron, Zinc, Copper, Potassium, Manganese, Phosphorus, Calcium and Magnesium. In early 2021, their industrial partner Nurevas aims to supply the West African market with the first fortified tomato sauce on the continent.
Ioanna Demosthenous, Cyprus - Cyprus Youth DiplomaCY
Cyprus Youth DiplomaCY is a youth NGO based in Nicosia. The aim of the organisation is to motivate young Cypriots to become active citizens and to deal with issues related to diplomacy, international relations and politics.
It gives members access to decision-making structures to express their views, and the chance to participate in meetings and open discussions with Cyprus’ officials, Ambassadors, diplomats, technocrats and experts. Members participate in events, conferences, seminars and programs with the final aim the empowerment of young people of Cyprus. One of the seminal projects is the “House of Youth Representatives” project, also known as “Cyprus Youth Parliament”. It is co-organised with Cyprus Youth Council and has given 300+ young people of Cyprus the opportunity to interact directly with the decision making structures of Cyprus. It has been supported by the Ministerial Council of the Republic of Cyprus since 2017.
Muhammad Sumon Molla Selim, Bangladesh - Klassroom Global
Muhammad has been in software development for 7+ years, designing efficient, scalable, and secure technology solutions. In 2020, he founded Klassroom, an online platform with the mission to ensure that anyone can learn anything, anywhere. It aims to empower the next generation with quality skills development training, and mentorship to grow their problem-solving capacity. This prepares them to battle the most significant problems facing young people, unemployment and insufficient skills training.
Klassroom Bangladesh has been providing regular tech sessions, workshops, and mentorship in Bangladesh. It has connected more than 18,000 youth already to learn about IT, programming, and career opportunities. Many of the students now work in the IT sector successfully. The team recently launched Klassroom Global to expand its services in other countries.
George Zeidan, Palestine - Right to Movement Palestine
Right to Movement Palestine was established in 2012 by a group of Palestinian and Danish activists. They aim to tell a different story about Palestine and highlight the restriction on their basic right, freedom of movement. They campaign for a more welcoming culture for Palestinian women, promoting the freedom to run, exercise, play sports. It promotes a positive, healthy and happy lifestyle, and creates connections between Palestinians living in different cities like Haifa, Jaffa, Jerusalem, and the West Bank.
They organised their first marathon in Palestine in 2013 attracting 600 runners. By 2016 there were 4,600 runners and over 46% women participants. Runners pass by checkpoints, walls, refugee camps and lands confiscated for Israeli settlements. Since 2012, the group has held weekly free practices like long-distance running, cardio, yoga and hiking in over 7 different Palestinian cities. Each group is led by a female and male volunteer.
Bianca Wannenburg, South Africa - Khuthaza Foundation NPC
Bianca co-founded and runs Khuthaza Foundation, a registered non-profit in South Africa. Its purpose is to fight food insecurity, provide waste management education and promote environmental sustainability for a better world. The organisation sees itself as the custodian of responsible production and consumption with the goal of reducing future economic, environmental and social costs, strengthening economic competitiveness and reducing poverty.
The three main avenues of impact are food gardens, waste management, and tree planting. Khuthaza designs and builds food gardens in corporate parks, schools and previously and currently disadvantaged communities, to achieve zero hunger and healthier communities. It organises community cleanups, teaching communities how to upcycle using eco-bricks to build seedbeds, park benches, and other structures. Currently, the eco-bricks are used to build raised beds for community food gardens. The ultimate goal is to construct affordable housing using eco-bricks. Finally, the team sources trees and succulents, organising planting events to help with CO2 sequestration and urban cooling.
Ibijoke Faborode, Nigeria - ElectHER
ElectHER is a non-partisan, end-to-end women's political advancement organisation co-founded by Ibijoke. It sits at the forefront of bridging inequality gaps in African politics by addressing the under-representation of women in elective office through behavioural change communications; skills development, human capital mobilization and campaign financing, with an end-goal to enable capable women to competitively Decide, Run and Win elections.
Through its various support initiatives, the organisation is on a mission to support 1,000 women to “Decide to Run”, and directly finance 35 women to run for elective office during the 2023 general elections in Nigeria. In the first six-months of operations, ElectHER secured $100,000 from two organizations and recently secured $2 million for its Agender35 campaign which launches officially on March 1st 2021. The organisation has reached over a million citizens with a variety of thought-provoking digital campaigns, thought-leadership and citizen engagement platforms as well as gender-centric policy analysis.
Taichi Ichikawa, Japan - World Dream Project
Taichi is an activist and social entrepreneur, with a history of innovative education projects. In 2014, he ran a career education programme that the community in Fukushima, suffering in the wake of the earthquake in 2011.
Taichi established a partnership with Ibun Hirahara, in pursuit of a mission to showcase the dreams of leaders in one place and share the borderless lessons around the world. With support from Iroha Publishing, they have produced a book that showcases a truly international picture of ambitions and beliefs, showcasing 201 dreams from 201 countries. Each dream comes with a personal story and is aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals. The two young leaders aim to bring introduced this to schools as a new form of the textbook, in institutions all over Japan and the world. In partnership with a national university, the book is already set to be distributed to 2,000 students and has received a public endorsement from 15 different world leaders.
Carolyn Kamanzi, Uganda - Ortus Africa Capital
The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor ranked Uganda as the most entrepreneurial country globally in 2015. While many people start small businesses, most do not make it to their first anniversary, as most start based on hobbies, without sustainable technical capabilities. Inspired by this paradox, Carolyn works to provide quality education for small businesses.
During the past year, Carolyn has trained 36 justice entrepreneurs through a 6-week intensive entrepreneurship training course. The purpose of this training was to build and strengthen the legal small business ecosystem in Uganda, and equip entrepreneurs with competencies for success and longevity. During the same year, Carolyn mentored 8 small and medium-sized businesses across different sectors including health, tourism, and agriculture, in the areas of revenue generation, value addition, and societal and developmental impact. These entrepreneurs are keen on developing solutions across their sectors, that address challenges brought about by the COVID 19 pandemic.
Interested in learning more about Ambassador projects around the world? Check out our Impact page to learn about how young leaders in the One Young World Community are leading the charge towards the UN's Sustainable Development Goals.