Ambassador Spotlights: November 2022

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.

An Overview of this Month's Featured Projects

7 M+

people impacted across this month's featured projects

560

gift boxes delivered

5

peer-reviewed studies published

Image of Tyra's project

Meet the Ambassadors

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Japan

Takuto Hori

HiveTokyo is an event for young people from Gen Z to co-create a brighter future, with Takuto currently serving as its President. The event has two primary missions: the first is to create a place of connection, stimulation, and community that transcends values, faculties, universities, and professions, recognising that new values cannot be created in enclosed spaces of people with the same backgrounds. HiveTokyo's second mission is to envision a brighter future to combat the pessimistic view that many Japanese people have of the future with the country's declining birthrate, ageing population, and economic situation.

HiveTokyo has over 500 attendees so far, and last month they held another event for 200 people during which they discussed Japan's strategy for web3.

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India

Shreya Surana

Transform is a joint initiative between Unilever, the UK's Foreign, Commonwealth and Development (FCDO) and EY. Transform supports entrepreneurs in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa in the areas of environment, inclusive economies and health and wellbeing. Transform's core programme blends grant funding with expert technical assistance from Unilever and EY employees, who act as project leads, providing these enterprises with support for 12-18 months. Through this mechanism, Transform has supported over 75 enterprises in 17 countries and has positively impacted 7 million people's lives. As an employee of Unilever, Shreya is working to scale the Transform support hub operations further by leveraging her One Young World network.

 

In addition, the Transform support hub connects specialists with social entrepreneurs around the world in order to solve problems and generate opportunities. These links enable social entrepreneurs and corporations to share viewpoints, recommendations, and insights. Access is open to all professionals and social entrepreneurs, and registration is available here.

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Brazil

Jéssica Bini Crescencio

Diversity and Inclusion are an integral part of Johnson & Johnson's culture, based on Employee Resource Groups (ERGs), where volunteers engage in causes to create awareness and engagement. Following in the footsteps of an American colleague, the Brazilian Alliance for Diversity Ability (ADA) at J&J began its Autism Pillar in 2019. The team proactively began to hire neurodiverse talent and developed the Spectrum Program. These ERGs consist of individuals, caregivers and advocates dedicated to shaping a culture of belonging for people with diverse abilities.

As a passionate employee of DE&I causes, Jéssica joined the ADA in 2019 and, in the following year, was nominated to be one of the first leaders of the Spectrum Program in Brazil. Today, J&J's Brazilian structure has hired a total of 14 autistic professionals, and with Jéssica’s ability to connect 2 more will be joining soon.

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Nicaragua

Tyra Omeir

Founded by Tyra Omeir, The Christmas Box Project reaches underprivileged children in rural communities in Nicaragua to bring joy and encourage every child to lean into learning. The project aims to inspire each child to dream of a brighter future for themselves and their communities. Since it began in 2019, the initiative has packed, transported, and delivered over 560 gift boxes to children living on the South Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua.

The Christmas Box Project set a goal to deliver 500 boxes in 10 communities across the country this holiday season, which they have already reached and surpassed. Each box contains toys, school supplies, personal hygiene products, and snacks, with an added emphasis this year on fostering reading through the inclusion of books. This project would not be possible without the help and generosity of hundreds of people coming together every year to pack or sponsor boxes for the Christmas Box children.

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France

Benazir Hilali

Axle International was co-founded by Benazir Hilali to support leaders in navigating uncertainties. While new, unpredictable, and global threats continue to emerge, Axle believes that adopting a collaborative culture of risk analysis is crucial to adapting decision-making processes. The organisation develops tools to capture accurate and real-time data to enhance risk-based governance across Africa while providing primary data and analytics on public opinion and consumer insights to uncover sociopolitical risks.

The organisation launched its African Risk Compass last spring, aiming to amplify the voices and concerns of the population to enable a new set of data to measure sociopolitical risks and trends across the African continent. Axle was nominated for the 2020 Innovation for Democracy and Governance by the African Union. Its approach has been featured by the University of Oxford, SIPRI Stockholm Forum, the Graduate Institute, the African Union, the Dubai Expo, Torino University, and the French Military School. Axle has trained over 100 civil servants in crisis management and published 5 peer-reviewed papers.

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Spain

Victoria Herrá

In Spain, over 55,000 children live in foster care institutions. Soñar Despierto is a non-profit that aims to improve the institutional foster care experienced by these children by providing them with the same experiences and opportunities available to other children and contributing to a happy and rewarding childhood. Victoria Herrá currently serves as a Volunteer Coordinator of the Family Program. The organisation hosts various programmes, including individualised school support, mentoring, programmes for small children, extracurricular activities and sports, and raising awareness.

The family volunteer programme allowed 65 minors to spend time in a structured familial environment this year. Soñar Despierto has also hosted workshops centred around motivating young people to pursue their dreams, as well as workshops designed to equip adolescents with the necessary tools for adult life.

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United Kingdom

Martin Penov

YEM UK and its umbrella organisation, JEF Europe, promote young people's voices on the European political scene and seek multilateral solutions to global challenges. They have developed charity initiatives in support of Ukraine and helped establish a Ukrainian Society in Manchester, which hosted the first Ukrainian student conference in the UK. Since the 2022 One Young World Summit, YEM Manchester has hosted a YOUNGO Local Conference of Youth to help create a youth statement for COP27.

 

The organisation has also continued its efforts to give a voice to young people from Belarus, premiering a document on the 2020 Belarussian protests by a young producer from that country. It has also sent delegates to the European Parliament for the LevelUP! youth conference, organised by the European Youth Forum, of which JEF is an active member. YEM UK raised £6,500 for Ukraine and has supported more than 8 eight Eastern European societies in Manchester. It continues to aid the Students' Union's work regarding European students.

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Manal Makkieh

Kayani for Palestinian Females Project is a youth-led initiative founded by Manal Makkieh to amplify the voices of refugee women residing in the Mar Elias refugee camp in Beirut. Palestinian refugees are denied full integration into Lebanese society, workplaces, and politics. Kayani offers multiple work-oriented programmes and the first mental health case management in the camp, with conceptual tools that tackle all forms of violence, including those related to gender. The project also works on family intervention, child protection, and capacity building. Kayani is also working on establishing the first gender-based violence support unit in the camp.

Kayani strives to incorporate an understanding of faith and cultural backgrounds into its work. It has collaborated with the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC) over the past two years to train on mitigating violent extremism in refugee communities. They have also joined interfaith campaigns organised by the UNAOC.

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Ecuador

Leticia Lisseth Tituaña Picuasi

Warmi STEM is an organisation created by Leticia Lisseth Tituaña Picuasi due to the low participation of indigenous women in STEM careers in Ecuador. It was formed by a group of women who came together to seek equal participation for rural Ecuadorian women in STEM fields. Warmi is a Kichwa word referring to women. The project has carried out initiatives encouraging indigenous children to develop an interest in STEM careers through the Peques STEM project.

Another project, 'We are Warmi STEM', promotes and generates a support network for indigenous women beginning their college or career lives. The organisation also conducts webinars and talks to make women scientists more visible in their social networks. Warmi STEM has been able to help more than 200 women and children through its mentoring projects, counselling, workshops and face-to-face seminars. These are people who belong to 7 indigenous peoples located in different communities of Ecuador.

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United Kingdom

Michael Yip

The UK Delegation to the Youth G7 (Y7) champions the voice of young people at the highest levels of international decision-making, as one of seven engagement groups of the G7. UK Delegates gather evidence, as well as work with foreign counterparts to develop policy recommendations. Delegates are also mentored by the Future Leaders Network.

Following consultations and negotiations, this year's UK, Y7 Delegates convened in Berlin, where they agreed on a package of policy recommendations for German Chancellor Olaf Scholz to take forward during his G7 Presidency. The recommendations covered five areas: (1) Green and Sustainable Planet; (2) Economic Transformations; (3) Resilience of Democracies; (4) Global Health; (5) Youth, Peace & Security.

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Cameroon

Dr. Frankline Sevidzem Wirsiy

The Future League consists of Seven Next-Generation African Leaders/young experts in diverse industries, each representing a different African country. Members receive guidance, mentoring, tools, and platforms for amplifying health financing messages through social media, in the press, and at SwitchPoint Exchange events around the globe. The program is designed to train and mentor a new generation of youth advocates to champion health financing in Africa.

Frankline, a 2022 Future Leaguer, has created over seven multilevel global public health short films that dive deeply into some of the most intense global health issues facing the world. These documentaries have been viewed by top national and global health leaders at international forums. As co-founder of Global Action for Public Health Services (GAPS), Cameroon, Frankline and his team aim to bridge the gap in public health services availability, accessibility, affordability, and acceptability among priority and vulnerable population groups and communities.

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South Africa

Didintle Felicia Letlape

Didintle currently works as a Social Risk, Impact Data Analysis Specialist at Anglo American. She helps to analyse data to support the decision-making and strategy of the company, integrating information across HR, supply chains, projects, inclusive procurement, sustainability and social performance. This serves to mitigate risk to the business and maximise impact on mining communities to improve people's lives. 

 

As GBV lead, Didintle's work also creates partnerships and linkages that promote an effective system that enables the government to curb gender-based violence. This is done by reducing second-hand victimisation by equipping service providers with the necessary skills and tools to ensure that they can handle the different cases they come across. So far, Anglo American's initiatives have reached over 100,000 people in its host communities, with Didintle playing a pivotal role in facilitating and scaling that impact. Didintle also recently spoke at the One Young World Southern Africa Post-Summit event, where she shared her work.