Grace is the Founder of the Mini Moon Project, a non-profit organisation focused on eradicating period poverty through advocacy, education, and the donation of menstrual kits to women and girls in underserved communities, orphanages, youth care centres, tribal communities, and shelters for domestic abuse survivors. In 2021, period poverty affected 26.31% of people who menstruate across the world; this number is likely to have grown in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic [1]. Grace was motivated to begin the Mini Moon Project after noticing the social issues surrounding menstrual health in marginalised communities in South Korea, and the intersections between this issue and gender equality, education, and the environment. The menstrual cups that the Mini Moon Project distributes can last up to 15 years, and are an environmentally friendly alternative to non-reusable sanitary pads.

Grace attended the One Young World Summit in Munich, 2021. She learned valuable lessons on leadership, growing as a leader, running her organisation more efficiently, and expanding the work that she is doing with the Mini Moon Project.

The Mini Moon Project has donated 3,000 menstrual kits since its founding in 2019, donating 600 menstrual cups in 2023 alone. The kits include reusable menstrual cups, cleaning products, and a box for storage to guarantee good hygiene for users. Additionally, the Mini Moon Project has distributed over 30,000 educational materials in seven countries, including comic books, video instructions on the use of the menstrual kits, and discussions to break the menstrual taboo. The Mini Moon Project also conducted a menstrual health training workshop with representatives from the World Health Organisation, reaching 100 students. Grace hopes to expand the impact of the Mini Moon Project by engaging with politicians and authorities to address period poverty in public spaces and support women’s empowerment.

“Participating in the One Young World Summit afforded me invaluable opportunities to
engage in virtual sessions focused on leadership development. These sessions not only
provided valuable insights but also equipped me with practical advice for expanding my
organisation and enhancing my networking capabilities.”

Pamela is the Sustainability Manager, Absa Bank Uganda and has worked with the bank since 2012. In reaction to a 17% spike in teenage pregnancy during the COVID-19 pandemic in Uganda, she published her book, Alyvea, to encourage better decision-making amongst young people. As a result, Pamela was selected and attended the One Young World Summit Manchester, 2022, as a representative from Absa Group. She found the Summit to be a transformational event, connecting with like-minded peers and discussing the commonalities of their experiences in the sustainability sector.

“Being a One Young World Ambassador has created opportunities for me. I've been able to feature in some of the national papers, such as being profiled as one of the top 40 in the country who are doing good. When we came for the Summit and I posted one of the main pages about the book I had published, three of the people from the Summit reached out to me and they wanted to be a part of the book I published on supporting teen mothers. So they were able to financially support me to print out more copies of the book.”

Pamela is actively involved in the Absa Women Network Forum (WNF). She developed a proposal, identified three homes in Uganda specialising in care for teen mothers and providing pregnancy support and vocational training. The WNF reviewed the particular needs of each home and provided specific material support to assist them. This involved setting up vegetable gardens and orchards to ensure the teen mothers have a sustainable source of food and provided dry food and clothes for the children. Through their ‘Support a Teen Mother help raise the future generation’ campaign, WNF rallied the support of Absa Uganda colleagues to provide material assistance and skills training to underprivileged teen mothers.

The team at WNF also donated 25 repurposed laptops with access to the Absa ReadytoWork platform. This platform teaches users financial, people, entrepreneurial, and work skills, with a certificate of completion for each module. In the third home, located in the western part of the country, WNF provided diapers and baby bedsheets. In total, over 500 teen mothers have been supported through Pamela’s and WNF’s activities.

Pamela was part of Absa Uganda’s inaugural Absa KH3_7 Hills run in 2023 where all proceeds went towards keeping 2,700 girls in school, through paying of school fees, support in Menstrual Health Hygiene and vocational training. Pamela engaged a third-party company to install a sustainable drinking water system at the TERREWODE Women’s hospital for women suffering from obstetric fistula, thus meeting the major need of the hospital.

Pamela’s daily role at Absa is to ensure that the company continues to act as a positive force for good in communities, in line with its ESG pillars. This involves looking at the sustainability practices of all sectors and ensuring that the company’s activities meet its internal standards for energy reduction, carbon emission reduction, conservation and environmental risk. And working closely with HR to ensure that women are represented in the company’s senior levels.

In 2018, Loek founded Jong Bayer in the Netherlands as a way of elevating the voices of young Bayer employees. Upon relocating to Berlin, Loek, along with his colleagues Jannis Busch, Josepha Niebelschuetz, and Sabrina Steinert, developed Young Bayer to facilitate meaningful cross-team connections within his organisation for current and future talent, to drive intrapreneurial initiatives at Bayer. Early in his career, Loek was actively engaged in networking events for young professionals outside of his company which inspired him to start his own project within Bayer. He attended both One Young World Summits in Manchester, 2022, and Belfast, 2023. He found the Summits to be eye-opening experiences, providing him with the motivation to be mindful of his own privilege and reinforcing his belief in the power of community.

“Meeting so many cool and inspiring people at the Summit makes me realise there's so much more we can do to make the world a better place. It's up to all of us to now start driving change.”

Young Bayer developed as a means of establishing generational diversity and fostering conversations, knowledge-sharing, and relationships between junior and senior colleagues at the company. It focused on growing the network, skills, and voice of this demographic within the company. Beginning as a grassroots movement, Young Bayer has been endorsed at senior levels within the company and has accumulated over 1,500 members since its founding. The movement maintains a non-hierarchical structure, allowing members to work horizontally across multiple focus areas, across professional expertise and the company’s managerial system. This circular approach allows members to gravitate towards their areas of interest, whether that is networking, personal development, or sustainability. Young Bayer operates globally, while maintaining strong local communities and initiatives such as Young Advisory Boards.

The initiative has since gone global within Bayer, and with this increasing presence has come a shift in focus. Young Bayer, alongside 4 other communities, has transitioned into the Multigenerational Employee Resource Group Exchange (MERGE). MERGE remains an umbrella movement across a diverse range of topics, all geared towards the vision: Bayer leverages the full potential of every generation. Some focus areas include reverse mentoring, upskilling the organisation, and organising the annual One Young World Delegation. This broad focus allows members to gain experience in areas that may have been otherwise difficult for them to access, as well as the chance to develop as more well-rounded leaders. The movement is impacting Bayer on multiple levels and continues to foster a culture of inclusivity across the entire organisation.

Aside from his work with MERGE, Loek also leads Bayer’s early career development programmes and is responsible for building an early career strategy for the company. Additionally he focused on increasing peer-to-peer accountability through feedback, which has grown increasingly important due to Bayer’s transition towards Dynamic Shared Ownership.

Emma’s passion for creating positive change on a large scale led her to join Deloitte. Upon joining, she founded Deloitte’s first US Green Team as a way for employees of all backgrounds to get involved in sustainability efforts at the firm. This included making Deloitte Boston a more environmentally sustainable workplace by removing single-use plastic water bottles from the office. The initiative found support in Deloitte’s Global Chief Sustainability Officer, Kathryn Alsegaf, who connected the Boston Green Team with Deloitte employees in other cities. The company now has 35 Green Teams across the USA, with over 1,000 members in total, focused on driving sustainable behavioural adoption, operational change, and volunteering with environmental non-profits.

Emma virtually attended the One Young World Summit in Munich, 2021. This was one of the first times she heard discussions that centred climate change from intersectional perspectives, which aligned with her own work on sustainability. Before the Summit, Emma transitioned into a role on Deloitte’s US internal sustainability and climate change team, leading the US firm’s Empower Individuals and Embed Sustainability pillars of the company’s WorldClimate strategy. These pillars focus on sustainable behaviour adoption, as well as embedding sustainability within the company, in part through the Green Teams, encouraging Deloitte employees to take actions, such as leading Zero Waste events and volunteering with local environmental non-profits. In this role, Emma is responsible for leading the decentralised Green Team network, developing the US firm’s Zero Waste operations and events strategy, and spearheading flagship employee engagement campaigns like Deloitte’s annual Earth Month celebration.

Under Emma’s leadership, the Green Teams organise their initiatives around encouraging sustainable behaviour adoption, embedding sustainability into local office operations, and volunteering with local environmental non-profits, offering Deloitte employees a diverse range of guidance and instruction on sustainability. In line with this structure, many Green Teams host a monthly “Do It Yourself” series on using household items to create environmentally friendly alternatives to consumer goods. Several Green Teams have also implemented sustainability measures within Deloitte’s operations, working with local operation's teams to transition the company’s pantry supplies towards reusable materials. Green Teams are also involved in developing campaign messaging for sustainability-related events like Earth Month. In Earth Month 2023 alone, Green Teams across Deloitte held more than 85 events, from educational webinars to park cleanups, and inspired 3,000 of their colleagues to participate in the Earth Month Ecochallenge and adopt sustainable lifestyle practices. The network is increasingly integrated into Deloitte’s overall sustainability strategy.

Emma’s role in Deloitte’s Zero Waste operations and events strategy has successfully diverted more than 68,000 pounds of waste from two major conferences through composting, recycling, and donations. She also leads the Zero Waste strategy for Impact Day, the company’s national day of volunteering, mobilising 30,000 Deloitte employees for volunteering services. During Impact Day 2023, Deloitte’s Zero Waste strategy was implemented at 139 Impact Day project sites, a nearly 10x increase from 2022. The initiative successfully diverted 89% of non-hazardous waste across these sites.

"At the Summit, I was thrilled to find climate change discussed as an intersectional issue, linking it with equity and health. It was refreshing to see others echo the perspective I've been advocating for at our firm."

Hemant has always been active in social impact spaces within and outside of PwC, including social mobility, mental health, and gender equality. He has also been active in the company’s Diversity Mentoring Scheme for the past five years. Through this initiative, students from underrepresented backgrounds receive training on vocational skills.

Hemant attended the One Young World Summit in Manchester, 2022. He found it to be deeply inspirational and has subsequently co-led PwC’s internal One Young World network with other ambassadors. Hemant has carried the connections he made at the Summit back to PwC, inviting One Young World Ambassadors into corporate spaces to aid mentees of the Diversity Mentoring Scheme programme at a careers day event. These Ambassadors delivered workshops and mock assessment centre sessions.

Hemant alongside colleagues such as Danaé Guiennot, a fellow Ambassador at PwC, became part of a working group looking at enhancements to our support arrangements for those experiencing domestic abuse. The group led by the firm’s employee relations, policy and advice team were able to gain board level approval and support for enhancements to the firm’s existing Domestic Abuse support. PwC provides employees experiencing domestic abuse with up to 10 days special paid leave, two nights of free emergency accommodation for them and their children to escape an abusive situation (with additional discretion for the business to extend this). This system can also be anonymised to ensure the privacy of victims and the launch has been extremely well-received.

Hemant was also part of the team that introduced biodegradable alternatives to plastic chewing gum in 14 PwC offices in the UK as part of a drive towards greater sustainability within the company. He was responsible for establishing partnerships with ESG organisations that champion the voices of young people working in the climate space, and platforming them at important climate events like COP28 to ensure their representation. He also attended the firm’s Mental Health First Aid course and shared his positive experience with his colleagues, advocating for more people, at all levels, to complete the training. Hemant led the internal One Young World network at PwC UK for a year after the Manchester Summit, including the Champions Network through which he and his team helped other motivated colleagues achieve their initiatives within the company.

“I've been in the One Young World network at PwC since joining so felt incredibly lucky to have had the experience of going to a Summit and hearing all the staggering stories; the event surpassed all expectations. You can get emotional and motivated after meeting inspirational people, some of whom I'm lucky to call friends today. I‘ve even worked with some on delivering impactful projects inside and outside of work and hope this continues. I encourage anyone reading this to get involved dedicating time to something beyond yourself. It doesn’t matter how much we each move the needle, as long as we move it.”

Layla began her career at BMW in the field of electromobility, integrating sustainability into BMW’s battery development process alongside performance and safety. She now specialises in negotiating and clarifying the sustainability requirements of BMW battery cells with the company’s battery suppliers.

This involves going through all the materials used in a battery to determine how much recycled material can be realised. It also involves assessing all the processes for battery production to achieve renewable energy implementation. Layla discusses these targets with the suppliers throughout the development process, including upstream and recycling partners. She also helps suppliers to establish their own sustainability protocols, advocating for more comprehensive data collection on emissions.

Once batteries are in production, audits are conducted to ensure that they fulfil sustainability targets. Layla and her team also identify new technologies and processes that can make the battery production process more energy efficient and improve battery life cycles. The overall objective is to establish a more sustainable battery for e-mobility at BMW.

Layla attended the One Young World Summit in Belfast, 2023. The BMW Delegation participated in pre-Summit workshops to connect with each other and to prepare for the event. Layla found the Summit itself to be deeply inspiring, both in terms of learning more about sustainability initiatives and technologies outside of BMW but also across other key topics like mental health and education. Her professional role at BMW is the development of the company’s next generation of electric vehicles. The BMW Group is committed to the Paris Climate Agreement and is consistently implementing the transformation towards all-electric, connected mobility.

“For my everyday work at BMW, climate change, energy and battery development are the core topics. At the Summit, it was really inspiring to get to know so many other important topics, like mental health, education and many more.”

Layla worked in BMW’s Munich factory before relocating to China in 2023 to focus on the company’s sustainable battery supply chain. China is the world’s major producer of batteries by volume, with vast potential for sustainable impact and increasing capacity for battery recycling.

Stephane, Charlie, and Paul work in finance at Asahi Europe & International. Stephane and Paul attended the One Young World Summit in London 2019, and upon returning to Asahi were inspired to turn finance into a catalyst for sustainability at the company. Influenced by a session at the Summit on sustainability in the financial sector, they considered ways to reconcile Asahi’s sustainability & finance goals and metrics to accelerate climate action. Charlie joined the team soon after hearing about the initiative. The team noted that Finance and Sustainability often appeared as opposing forces; with environmental progress increasing costs, contrary to the traditional business goal of profit maximisation. They recognised when both environmental progress and financial growth are required of businesses, the two fields need to share a common language and goals for both to thrive together. Rather than maximising profit at the expense of the planet or vice versa, we need to maximise profit free of environmental costs.

Non-financial accounting for finance is not new, and while the team started by scouring through established methodologies were unsatisfied with their external focus or high complexity. What the team sought instead was something that any employee in the organisation could understand and use to guide their own decision-making. This led to creating a new metric – Sustainable EBITA (S-EBITA), profit minus the environmental cost of doing business.
Two key questions emerged – what environmental impact do we want to measure and what cost do we want to associate with it?

Asahi’s sustainability team had already begun work to measure the company’s environmental impact around the company’s 2030 goals of carbon neutrality, packaging circularity, sustainable sourcing and ever more efficient use of water. For costing, the team avoided subjective pricing options and based environmental costing around “the polluter pays principle”, something enshrined in both UK and EU law. Based on this principle, Asahi carbon pricing has been set according to the cost of carbon capture & storage, and plastic pricing set according to the Ocean Cleanup’s costs to recover plastic which has entered the environment. These environmental costs are then deducted from profit (EBITA) to arrive at S-EBITA.

S-EBITA allows Asahi to determine which operations, projects and products are already highly sustainable along with areas for improvement, and the methodology has been fully integrated across all Asahi Europe & International financial decision-making forums. For example, the sustainability of investment proposals now directly impacts the financial return shown for each project helping to prioritise profit maximisation net of environmental costs. S-EBITA is further in use for organisational target setting, performance measurement and reward up to the board level to ensure that profit and sustainability remain complementary forces and not opposing priorities.

Stephane, Charlie, and Paul are sharing their methodology with a consortium of corporates through Oxford University’s Saïd Business School and the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales in order to promote simple, low-cost and decentralised sustainable thinking in accounting practices.

“We wanted Finance to be a catalyst for climate action, and after bouncing ideas off people at One Young World the biggest gap we saw was that performance metrics of the organisation were based solely on the delivery of profit. We thought – let's try and create a more complete financial metric which takes into account the environmental cost of doing business and can be understood at the individual level.” - Stephane Rouschmeyer

Anna studied strategic product design at a postgraduate level, integrating sustainability into design solutions including in the food packaging space. After seeing a presentation from a colleague who attended One Young World at Deloitte, Anna successfully applied to attend the One Young World Summit in Manchester, 2022. She learned important leadership lessons and was inspired to action her ideas for social impact within her company. Anna has been able to connect with her colleagues from international Deloitte offices through One Young World, many of whom also work in sustainability, thereby strengthening the sustainability network within the company further.

“I think from the Summit, my main takeaway was that you're never too young to lead and never too old to learn. And that really stuck with me because sometimes I feel like, well, what's really my position? What impact can I make? And I think that's really important for everyone. Like, hey, you don't have to be the CEO of a company to be able to lead.”

Anna sits on the Advisory Board of the Deloitte Impact Foundation and works in the Future of Food team. The latter role involves looking at food systems of the future and determining how to transition our current food system to a more sustainable model. Anna’s contributions to the team are centred on sustainability, and she has worked on building blockchain platforms and renewal strategies. She has also established a partnership with a food bank, working with them to develop strategies to increase the amount of fresh food they receive. Anna was part of the team that worked with the World Food Programme in East Africa to speed up food delivery processes by digitising shipping documents, increasing the efficiency of food systems in the region.

Deloitte’s Impact Foundation is a distinct entity within the company that does pro bono work, with Deloitte employees in the Netherlands contributing 1% of their work hours to these projects. The Foundation has three primary pillars: Inclusive Society, WorldClass Education, and Sustainability. As a board member on the Foundation’s Sustainability pillar, Anna assesses project applications on a diverse range of environmental and sustainability issues, including ocean cleanups, employing AI solutions to prevent deforestation, and building coalitions to tackle problems in the food space.

Anna has also been involved in diversity, equality and inclusion within Deloitte and served on the board of the Cultural Diversity and Inclusion network at Risk Advisory in the Netherlands. She led the Female Ventures Amsterdam team, a non-profit supporting and empowering women in corporates, SMEs and start-ups through mentorship opportunities, community events, and a growing online community.

Nikheil and Sithabile participated in a year-long leadership development programme through Transnet and Henley Business School Africa, which included working on a community project and culminated in them attending the One Young World Summit in Belfast, 2023. Both Ambassadors have been active in social impact and volunteering spaces in their personal lives and have a keen interest in mental health.

Through the One Young World Summit, Nikheil and Sithabile were exposed to various community projects and mental health solutions, including the work of One Young World Ambassador Alice Hendy’s organisation, R;pple. The concept of a Chief Mental Health Officer, which they encountered at the Summit, also piqued their interest as a means to integrating specific mental health resources into Transnet’s daily operations.
After returning from the Summit, Nikheil and Sithabile presented se

veral proposed initiatives to Transnet leadership, with plans for short, medium, and long-term implementation. The first of these, to be rolled out in the short-term, is the promotion of the company’s comprehensive but under-utilised Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) to ensure that Transnet employees are aware of the resources available to them. The team is also hoping to introduce the OctoberHealth platform, where fellow One Young World Ambassador Mandy Muchnick is CFO, to democratise mental health care for company employees. Nikheil and Sithabile are interested in introducing R;pple’s interceptive tool for online self-harm searches to Transnet employees who are parents. The team is exploring the possibility of bringing mental health first aid to Transnet and integrating this training at the organisation’s academy.

“The greatest takeaway from the Summit was to dream big but start small, helping just one person is a step in the right direction”

In the long-term, Nikheil and Sithabile are also hoping to propose the expansion of mental health services on Transnet’s Phelophepa health train that has been providing both urban and rural communities in South Africa with basic health services since 1994. The Phelophepa train currently offers limited psychological support and counselling to people struggling with mental health, but Nikheil and Sithabile hope to scale the mental health resources Transnet can offer through the service. The team are engaging with leadership at Transnet and its Wellness Department to explore how best to merge their ideas for mental health with the company’s existing efforts to maximise their impact.

Elena has always been passionate about using her professional role to bring about positive change for sustainability, and is an advocate for women’s leadership and empowerment. She attended the One Young World Summit in Manchester, 2022, which inspired her to begin developing Lean In Circles with her colleagues at Holcim who are also Ambassadors, centred on women’s support and reverse mentoring in the company.

These Circles are inspired by the Lean In movement founded by Sheryl Sandberg, and they have already impacted the lives of over 300 Holcim female employees in 32 countries. Over the coming months, the Circles will be spread in all 60 countries where Holcim operates. At Holcim, 87% of participating women attribute a positive impact from being in a Circle and 63% feel like they have a stronger support network.

“During those four days at the Summit in Manchester, I found so many young, passionate people who started actions to shape the world, facing our main challenges almost alone. And for me it was like a sign which gave me a lot of inspiration to start some social projects with my colleagues, other Ambassadors from our team, and also to be more active in my own project area.”

Elena is an R&D project leader. Her role is dedicated to developing an innovative insulative material, Airium, at R&D level, offering technical support to countries who are deploying Airium, and co-development of new applications based on local clients feedback and market needs. Airium is already present in nine countries. The Airium R&D team is based in Holcim Innovation Centre in Lyon, France.

Airium is an innovative mineral insulating foam range for improved energy efficiency in floors, roofs and walls and for efficient lightweight filling and levelling. Boosting energy efficiency in both new buildings and renovation, from emerging to developed countries, is a cornerstone of humanity’s fight against climate change. Airium offers an insulation solution that is planet-friendly and in line with the principles of the circular economy. Airium can be produced directly on-site resulting in less volume of material being transported, decreasing waste on site. It is mineral and easy to recycle, with no separation phase from other mineral layers at the end of the building’s life.

Airium has been labelled an efficient solution by the Solar Impulse Foundation, and was included in their Solutions Guide launched during COP27. Airium is particularly useful in developing countries which don't have strict thermal insulation standards to make buildings more energy efficient, and also lack the resources to develop alternative insulated materials like organic foams or mineral wool. In contrast, the cement necessary for Airium production is available in most countries.

The Airium R&D team has calculated a case study for a 107 m² individual house in an Algerian climate using 12 cm of Airium™ Thermoroof as insulation versus no roof insulation. The case shows that Airium leads to yearly energy savings of 61% on heating and 45% on cooling. It allows communities to be more sustainable and use fewer natural resources to heat or cool buildings. Holcim is proposing a broad range of sustainable constructive solutions to their clients and Airium is a part of that.

Fabián is a visionary entrepreneur at the forefront of educational and workforce innovation in Latin America. As the Founder of Open Green Road and Genomawork, he has spearheaded initiatives that address significant disparities in both education and employment across the region. Open Green Road is a pivotal e-learning platform that offers comprehensive resources for students facing compulsory standardised school graduation exams in Colombia, Chile, Mexico, and Brazil. Programmes like PuntajeNacional and AprendoLibre have been instrumental in preparing over 3.5 million students and supporting 85,000 teachers. Its Gradúate.cl programme has empowered an additional 180,000 adults to complete their secondary education and earn their high school diplomas. The organisation’s social impact work extends to providing financial literacy workshops for high school students from underprivileged communities and organising the AprendoEmprendo student entrepreneurship competition. 

Parallel to his work with Open Green Road, Fabián also established Genomawork, a groundbreaking recruitment platform that leverages automation and AI to revolutionise the hiring process across 12 countries in Latin America. Genomawork’s mission is to level the playing field in the job market, ensuring equal opportunities for all candidates. By offering customised solutions, including gamified evaluation processes and AI-driven interview assistants, it facilitates more efficient and unbiased hiring practices.

Fabián’s involvement in the One Young World Summit in Bangkok, 2015, was a turning point, allowing him to engage with young leaders globally and amplify his impact. This experience has been a catalyst, inspiring him to promote his initiatives more effectively and reach a broader audience. Through both of his initiatives, Fabián is making substantial strides towards closing the educational and employment gaps in Latin America. His dual role as a founder highlights his dedication to fostering accessible education and fair employment practices, making a tangible difference in the lives of millions.

“After the Summit, I realised that the way you show others what you're doing is important. One of the key impacts that One Young World has had on our project is this thing about marketing actively, trying to not only do the thing but showing what you're doing. After the Summit, I realised that I have made so much impact, I've impacted so many students, and I’ve also built up my public speaking skills as a result to present this.”

Sarina attended the One Young World Summit, 2021, where she formed a powerful network of like-minded peers with whom she could collaborate and think about how to create greater impact. She has always believed in the power of mentorship and one-to-one relationships, and how they can give people the space and tools they need to grow into their full potential.

“My biggest takeaway from One Young World is having the opportunity to form an incredible network with like-minded individuals who have bold ideas. You know what they say, if you want to have some impact, do it alone. If you want to have a greater impact, do it together.”

For the past three years, Sarina has been actively involved in mentoring with a non-profit organisation that supports individuals to rejoin the workforce, advance their careers, or find their purpose in life. Sarina has personally supported individuals to return to employment through one-to-one coaching and workshops on essential skills like CV writing, interview preparation, and skills identification. She is also involved with MovingWorlds, through which she has worked with and mentored an enterprise based in Liberia called Rehab Africa. Her work with them has focused on building a mentoring programme to support recent university graduates, people applying for scholarships, and people looking to enter the job market or advance their careers.

Sarina also looks for platforms for her colleagues to engage in the power of mentorship. She recently initiated a partnership between Reckitt and Tent Partnership for Refugees, an organisation connecting mentors from the private sector with refugees in the UK to support their integration into the labour force. While the initiative is still in its early stages, Sarina is confident that she and her colleagues at Reckitt will be able to provide vital support in assisting refugees rejoining the workforce. Sarina and the rest of the team are working closely with Tent to understand what value Reckitt can add to the programme, and is ensuring that materials are in place to support both mentors and mentees. Tent will play a key role within Reckitt’s global approach to mentorship as a way employees can use their skills and knowledge to accelerate social impact.

Mentors will be asked to contribute at least one to one and a half hours a month for a period of four to six months, but additional contributions are encouraged if mentors feel they would be beneficial to the mentees. The pilot programme is kickstarting with 10-15 mentors from Reckitt, but Sarina is hoping to significantly scale this initiative in the near future.
Within Reckitt, Sarina also runs a monthly series in which colleagues from different areas of the company’s operations talk to the global team she forms part of on a diverse range of subjects. This series is designed to enhance knowledge and awareness of upcoming trends, while promoting a safe environment for all employees.

Anil founded the Young Tinker Academy and Foundation in 2015, to address the lack of access to quality education and opportunities in rural India. The Young Tinker Academy and Foundation is democratising access to STEM education through its Intent, Content and Environment pedagogical method for 21st century skills development and hands-on learning. Anil is a recipient of the Indian government’s National Youth Award for his achievements in education accessibility.

Anil attended the One Young World Summit in Manchester, 2022. He connected with fellow Ambassadors working on education projects across the world and has taken inspiration from their work, incorporating their approaches and ideas into his own. Additionally, he has used the One Young World Community as a network to connect with corporates for possible collaborations through corporate social responsibility programmes.

The Young Tinker Academy has provided education to 247,000 young people between grades 6-12. Young Tinker Spaces offer a collaborative workplace, mostly in schools, for the students to work on their projects through hands-on learning. Students of the Young Tinker Space Programme also must plant a tree to graduate. Additionally, students get to participate in the annual Young TinkerFest, a science festival where they can showcase their innovations. Through the Rural Innovation Programme, students from other countries volunteer to support the implementation of ongoing Young Tinker Foundation projects. Students from the Young Tinker Academy have participated in NASA’s Human Exploration Rover Challenge (HERC) 2021 and 2023 editions, where they won World Rank 3 and the Social Media Award respectively.

“The experience that we get at One Young World is totally different, meeting all these leaders in one place. Once you have the entire world in one place, you get energised, inspired and you also gain leadership skills. Leadership skills are not about going to a classroom and learning, they’re about watching people and learning from them. So I gained those leadership skills and it impacted our own organisation in a big way.”

Alina began her social impact journey volunteering with organisations that worked to develop inclusive spaces in her youth. She founded Mitti Café while at university to provide adults with physical, intellectual, and psychiatric disabilities with opportunities for professional development and economic empowerment. Mitti Café’s outreach programmes are creating awareness of inclusivity and disability rights across India. It is also providing employees’ mothers with cooking skills, resources, and a platform within their cafés where they can sell their products, empowering them with vital business management training through the Mitti Moms programme.

Mitti Café has expanded to 42 locations in India, operating in both corporate and public spaces. Employees have served over 11 million meals and beverages as trained baristas. The organisation now employs hundreds of people with disabilities and has upskilled 5,000 individuals with disabilities from vulnerable backgrounds to jumpstart their careers and work to become economically secure. As part of its outreach campaigns, Mitti Café’s employees have served over six million meals to the economically vulnerable through the organisation’s Karuna Meals programme. Alina is hoping to expand Mitti Café further in the coming years, taking the concept global and facilitating the economic empowerment of adults with disabilities to help them generate sustainable livelihoods.

Tchofor Dick founded Sickle Cell International Foundation to support people affected by sickle cell disease in Cameroon after undergoing a bone marrow transplant himself. Sickle Cell International Foundation is tackling the significant stigma surrounding sickle cell disease in the country. The initiative begins by onboarding families affected by sickle cell, getting to know their needs in order to personalise the support and care that it can offer. A support plan typically includes counselling, nutritional advice, healthcare, and lifestyle changes. Patients are routinely monitored by volunteer mothers, while the project also creates spaces for families to meet and share their experiences and best practices for dealing with sickle cell disease in their daily lives.

Tchofor Dick attended the One Young World Summit in Manchester, 2022. His experience at the Summit, and interacting with other young leaders working on different issues, widened his perspective and helped him become a more compassionate leader. As a result, Tchofor Dick returned to his organisation with a stronger sense of purpose and calling.

Sickle Cell International has impacted 150 families with its programming, including support plans and providing over-the-counter medications and blood tonics. These blood tonics, which increase the blood volume of patients, are taken monthly. Sickle Cell International has also taught families how to create blood tonics. Through partnerships with hospitals and medical clinics, the organisation helps patients save money on treatments, medical studies and other hospitalisation costs associated with sickle cell. 

“When I got to the Summit in Manchester, I was humbled, I was amazed, I was touched, I was inspired by the many other people who've been able to do so much from nothing. I came back with a stronger sense of purpose, a stronger sense of calling, and I came back more determined on my own work and what I was doing. That is really where I would say I benefited a lot.”