Amani was involved in social impact spaces before she began her Sustainability and Impact Investing professional career in banking. She attended the One Young World Summit in London, 2019, as a banking sponsor of the Summit. Amani’s time at the Summit inspired her to continue her social impact work, and it encouraged her to grow further as a leader.

“My experience at the Summit was incredible. It was the best time, honestly, meeting so many inspiring young people and the founders, of course. And it was just wonderful to witness all of the ideas, social impact, environmental impact and to see what was being developed in person and all the innovation from all parts of the world. It helped me a lot, the One Young World experience, I feel very grateful and it inspired me to grow further.”

Amani was introduced to female coffee farmers during a trip to Ethiopia in 2017, after which she founded Amatte Coffee to tackle gender inequality. The company works with women farmers, empowering them economically through the sale of their coffee. Amani also founded the Amatte Foundation, through which she works with two orphanages in Ethiopia and Eritrea. Amani hopes to upscale the impact of Amatte Coffee in the near future to continue empowering women coffee farmers.

Amani believes that diversity efforts within companies should go beyond gender, race, sexual orientation, and disabilities. In her previous role, Amani founded and chaired the EMEA Black and Asian Employee Network of her previous employer. She worked with the board to ensure equal access to opportunities for candidates regardless of their background, levelling the field to make the industry accessible to people from underprivileged backgrounds. Amani’s advocacy resulted in a commitment from the bank’s board of directors to double the number of Black talent in VP and MD roles. She also helped build the bank’s impact investing and Sustainability team, working on issues such as affordable healthcare and housing. Amani was part of the team that worked on The Wildlife Conservation Bond, also known as the Rhino Bond, an innovative approach to helping rhino conservation efforts in South Africa.

Amani currently serves as Managing Director, Head of Sustainability, at State Street Bank International, the European arm of State Street. She is in charge of building their sustainability department, and has advised the company’s board on reducing emissions and addressing social issues within State Street’s business. Amani is responsible for the creation of State Street Bank International Sustainability department and Strategy, which addresses the European Central Bank’s climate change requirements and the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive.

Amani believes that the finance industry has a huge role to play in the fight against climate change and social equity. She has focused her efforts on educating and training key decision-makers within State Street Bank International to integrate sustainability measures, like climate and environmental risk, into their new product, credit risk, market risk, liquidity, and other financial products. Amani is also the global co-chair for State Street’s Women’s Network, promoting gender parity in the workforce and is part of the global Black Leaders group at State Street.

Selva discovered her passion for gender equality during an internship and decided to dedicate her life to diversity and inclusion. She worked in the first Gender Unit of the Veracruz Office for Economic Development; her role involved implementing campaigns such as He For She. During this time, Selva was selected for Fundación Botín’s Programme for Strengthening Public Service in Latin America. She remains an active Botín alumni and member of the Red of Servidores Públicos de México, facilitating collaboration between the government and corporate sector.

Selva joined AB InBev as part of their Global Management Trainee programme, and then went on to various People Operation roles. She was responsible for the development of employees and their journey at the company, at the time a relatively new area of operations for AB InBev in her region. Selva was able to bring new perspectives to her work, including gender representation in the logistics department of AB InBev.

Selva attended the One Young World Summit in The Hague, 2018. The Summit helped her tie together her previous social impact experiences with her role in people development at AB InBev. Selva served as the One Young World Coordinating Ambassador for Central America and Mexico in 2020. During her time in the role, she helped organise virtual events, including on societal transformation driven by young people, to keep the One Young World Community for Central America and Mexico active during the pandemic.

“One Young World is a constant reminder that young leaders will drive the change in the future; it is a source of inspiration and action. Today, we must not just celebrate young people creating change, but also empower them with tools for this change in the future. And I believe One Young World is key to this process.”

Selva is the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Talent Attraction Director for Middle Americas, the largest region in AB InBev globally covering over 40,000 employees. She aims to create an inclusive and safe workplace where everyone can be the best version of themselves. To achieve this, she has led and supported various initiatives.

The Basic Conditions initiative benefited more than 20,000 employees across distribution centres and breweries, ensuring access to services and support across operation and production lines, and developing pilots for accessible heavy lifting machines for women. The Parental Leave Benefits policy has impacted more than 8,000 families. Additionally, her allied leadership and inclusive workplace concepts, implemented through psychological safety awareness, have reached upwards of 16,000 employees.

Outside of AB InBev, Selva has recently founded Monti, her own project creating educational toys for children with disabilities. This ties into Selva’s goal for the future to expand her diversity and inclusion work beyond gender equality, both at AB InBev and externally.

Sebastian’s interest in social impact was shaped by his childhood growing up and witnessing the consequences of social inequality in Peru. As a young adult, he was involved in social projects focused on the economic and social empowerment of marginalised communities displaced by terrorism, specifically children and their mothers. He first attended the One Young World Summit in Bogotá, 2017, an experience that opened his eyes to the magnitude of impact he can generate as an employee of a global multinational company.

“It's having not only this experience at the Summit, but also the tangible projects that came out from the experience. So it's always an asset to have, and to share this. And the fact that I'm still working as a core team member for One Young World at Bristol Myers Squibb just speaks to it.”

A physician by training, Sebastian is currently the Renal Cell Carcinoma Lead in the World Wide Medical Oncology organisation at Bristol Myers Squibb. Outside of his daily responsibilities, he has been involved in various company inclusion and diversity initiatives since becoming a One Young World Ambassador.

Following the Summit, Sebastian collaborated with other ambassadors on the design and execution of the company-wide network of inclusion ambassadors. He played a key role in developing a grassroots initiative of 2,000 employees across 31 markets in support of the science-based inclusion approach branded as “Possibility Lives.” This network has become an integral part of Bristol Myers Squibb with representation from each of the company’s functional areas ensuring operational alignment with the inclusion and diversity strategy.

Sebastian is also part of the core team working on the One Young World – Bristol Myers Squibb partnership. He has led the company’s workshop presence at the Munich (2021), Manchester (2022) and Belfast (2023) Summits. The workshops he led provided practical roadmaps for delegates to apply their inclusion and diversity ideas at their companies, such as the Hip Hop Public Health initiative to share learnings on harnessing the power of music and culture to improve health outcomes in underserved communities and a sustainability initiative that partners with internal talent to share successful project implementations at a multinational company.

As an introvert, Sebastian also played an integral role on another key project on inclusivity called Valuably Quiet. This initiative highlights the necessity and value of including introversion and personality diversity in conversations around inclusion and diversity within Bristol Myers Squibb.

In the future, Sebastian aims to become more involved in helping sustainability efforts at Bristol Myers Squibb. He is currently active in discussions on how best to reduce the carbon footprint of medical conferences.

Annika’s interest in sustainability stems from the beginning of her professional career at Siemens Mobility. As part of the company’s service team, she oversaw the maintenance of trains and developed digital services to ensure availability and to help promote sustainable transportation. At the One Young World Summit in Ottawa, 2016, she applied to be part of the Siemens delegation, and finally gave a keynote alongside three fellow Siemens Delegates. She still remembers the title of the keynote ‘Make real what matters!’, where Annika discussed Siemens’ efforts on maintaining the Skytrain in Bangkok and ensuring that people have safe, efficient, and sustainable means of transportation to get around the city.

“I was very interested in the presentations at the Summit, to see those great people like Kofi Annan. He, for example, said, you are never too young to lead. And that stuck in my head. I mean, I was 29 at that time, and just afterwards, I was in my first leadership role with Siemens. So it was good to have this encouragement from One Young World when you go back and start your first leadership role.”

After the Summit, Annika was promoted to her first leadership position at Siemens as Head of Service Engineering at Siemens Mobility. Looking back at the Summit in Ottawa, she was grateful for the lessons she learned on leadership and sustainability through One Young World.

Annika’s career has progressed in the last few years and in her current role as Head of Technology and Innovation Management at Siemens, her focus is on how the company can develop and use emerging technologies to prepare its products for the future. As part of this role, her first and most significant task has been to reshape the company's core technologies. Annika is passionate about open innovation and has developed Siemens’ open innovation strategies, aiming to collaborate with others to achieve Siemens’ sustainability goals.

In her daily role, Annika enables her teams to analyse the company’s sustainability needs in terms of decarbonisation, circularity, and other metrics. They helped generate a sustainability portfolio for Siemens Technology to ensure that the company’s technological research and development is focused on creating sustainable products.

Annika is also heavily involved in academia, to foster partnerships between professional and academic institutions. She helped Siemens establish a sustainability MBA in partnership with the FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg University. This MBA is open to everyone, and is aimed not only at Siemens professionals but all those interested in sustainability. One of the course modules on Sustainable Technologies is headed and lectured by her – an activity she enjoys as it combines passing on crucial knowledge as well as interacting with highly motivated students.

Annika is also still in contact with her former university. In 2015, she completed her doctorate in mechanical engineering at RHTW Aachen University. Today she is part of the university’s mentoring programme for PhD students as well as a visiting lecturer. Annika and her Siemens team constantly collaborate with Aachen to jointly drive innovation ensuring sustainability.

Phyllis co-founded M-SCAN Uganda in 2017 while participating in a community-based educational research project in medical school. She was posted to a rural, underprivileged part of Uganda, where she witnessed firsthand a severe lack of available resources for the care of pregnant women. Upon returning to the capital, Kampala, she along with her colleagues first conceptualised M-SCAN Uganda, an initiative specialising in innovative, portable ultrasound technology that reduces maternal mortality rates through early detection and effective intervention. 

Phyllis attended the One Young World Summit in London, 2019, which she found deeply inspiring. She heard from industry experts in healthcare, which pushed her further in her social impact journey. She also made several promising connections at the Summit, and remains in touch with her fellow Ambassadors. 

M-SCAN Uganda has so far performed over 8,079 ultrasounds, impacting more than 7,850 women. Its groundbreaking technology has detected over 991 complications through early diagnoses, working closely with the healthcare system to refer these pregnant women to hospitals that can provide them with the necessary care to ensure their safety. M-SCAN Uganda’s technology is significantly cheaper than more traditional ultrasound machines, and the organisation divides its revenue with the health clinics in which it operates, thereby helping to reinforce Uganda’s wider healthcare infrastructure. It also provides laptops through which its technology can run, and its solutions are solar-powered. M-SCAN Uganda has also directly trained nine frontline maternal health workers in rural communities in the country.

“I was mind blown by how much my scope of imagination was widened at the Summit, especially because you hear all these stories from people out there doing these formidable things. It inspired me to keep pushing the flag higher because it feels like there's a force out there that's fighting for the global good and I must be a part of it.”

Alberto is the Founder and Executive Secretary of Sembrando Conciencia, an initiative that began during the pandemic to support vulnerable and marginalised communities in Paraguay. It aims to bring socio-environmental wellbeing to marginalised communities, improve their quality of life, and guarantee food security. Alberto has scaled the project from his initial efforts donating food from his orchard for community-wide lunches to providing harvest training to these communities. His efforts have facilitated a greater self-reliance through the creation of community gardens, environmental and waste management education, and psychological support.

Alberto attended the One Young World Summit in Manchester, 2022. He spoke on a panel with María Juliana Ruiz, Former First Lady of Colombia, and fellow Ambassador Liliana Estigarribia Franco. After attending the Summit, he has frequently collaborated with One Young World’s regional team and his fellow Latin American Ambassadors. 

Sembrando Conciencia has created nine community gardens so far, feeding 800 people, including 600 people who were provided free meals during the pandemic. The organisation has provided environmental awareness education to 300 students and teachers, while its waste management and composting workshops have reached an additional 450 people. Sembrando Conciencia has also provided gardening supplies to the local communities in which it operates so that they can create their own orchards. Through its waste management efforts, it has helped local communities compost 600 kilogrammes of organic waste for use in communal gardens. The project also offers sports classes to local community members and provides psychological support to those in need.

“Being part of the One Young World Summit has led me to position myself as a leader in a different and stronger manner. As a widely recognised event, it has opened new avenues for me to be part of other events and establish new partnerships. I am currently leading the Red de Jóvenes para la Acción Climática in Paraguay and I believe that all the lessons on leadership I took from One Young World have led to me leading in this position.”

Rinesh Sharma MP began his career as a social entrepreneur, founding Smart Farms Fiji to modernise farming and introduce innovative urban farming techniques to the country. He was instrumental in assisting clients with personalised hydroponic farms while designing training programmes on hydroponics for students and teachers at various schools.

Rinesh returned to Fiji after attending the One Young World Summit in London, 2019, with a broadened perspective and the motivation to bring green innovation to Fiji. Rinesh was randomly selected to be his country’s flag bearer at the Summit, a moment of immense pride for him, and he has remained connected with the wider One Young World Community ever since. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Rinesh received funding from One Young World and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to deliver food supplies to vulnerable families in Fiji and develop agro-technology to ensure the country’s food security. His work introducing innovative green agriculture culminated in Smart Farms Fiji providing hydroponics training and kits to six marginalised settlements on the island of Viti Levu. Rinesh has trained over 13,000 people on sustainable and climate-smart agriculture, soil management, and financial literacy and worked with UNDP in Fiji.

“Going to this Summit, I think the most beautiful experience was being able to hold up my country's flag among thousands of other people on the world stage. And then to receive funding from One Young World with Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, I think it was huge. Today a farmer can be a Member of Parliament at the age of 29 years old. So I tell the young people to believe in your aspirations and ambitions, and I want them to do it better than me and at a younger age than me. You are never too young or small to make a difference”

Rinesh was invited by the Indian High Commission to Fiji to visit the Parliament of India as a young changemaker. He had the opportunity to meet with ministers and politicians and, upon returning to Fiji, interviewed with the General Secretary of the FijiFirst political party, presenting his vision for sustainable development and growth. Rinesh was selected to run in upcoming elections by the party, and was elected as the second youngest Member of Parliament from the 2022 General Election at 29 years old.

As an opposition MP, Rinesh’s role is to hold the government accountable, put forward motions, and table the concerns of the voting public in parliament. He plays an important role in representing the views and interests of his peers, debating issues, proposing legislation and advocating for positive change within Fiji and the Pacific region. For Rinesh, being an MP is a valuable experience in governance, public speaking, critical thinking, and leadership skills, which is required to develop solutions to societal problems and help shape policies that affect the people of Fiji.

Rinesh strives to make himself available to Fijian citizens experiencing hardship or difficulties, assisting and connecting them with solutions while demanding the greatest possible level of transparency from government officials.

Tyler is the Founder and CEO of The Hope Festival, a non-profit organisation that holds an annual festival and year-round volunteering activities to provide material assistance, access to services, connections to resources, and emotional support for people experiencing poverty and homelessness. The Hope Festival facilitates access to supplies such as groceries, clothes, and hygiene supplies, services such as vaccinations and health check-ups, and connects vulnerable people with local organisations for further long-term care and support. The movement’s Hope in Motion programme empowers people to drive tangible change in their local communities by empowering them through year-round volunteering opportunities.

Tyler attended the One Young World Summit in Munich, 2021, and in Belfast, 2023. As a Z Zurich Foundation Scholar, he was able to establish a partnership with, and receive funding from, the Z Zurich Foundation following the Munich Summit to develop and scale The Hope Festival’s work. During the Belfast Summit, Tyler received mentorship from One Young World Counsellor and CEO of United Way, Angela Williams.

The Hope Festival has impacted 9,500 people facing homelessness and poverty so far, including 6,500 children. It has donated an additional 40,000 pounds of clothing and food to local charities through its other projects. Hopefest itself offers a wide range of material support to attendees, including providing grocery bags, clothing for children and adults, toys, school supplies, haircuts, health screenings, and dental care. During the event, volunteers decorate the venue with supportive messages while grocery bags are accompanied by handwritten notes for the families in need – all with the goal of reminding them that they aren’t forgotten and that there is a community that has their backs. Tyler is looking to expand the scope of the Festival into a more systematic approach to tackling poverty and homelessness.

“One Young World is truly the most incredible community that I have the privilege to be part of. The connections you make and understanding of one another, being able to put yourself in someone else's shoes or hear about what it's like to grow up in a country on the other side of the world that experiences completely different issues, and to learn from how other young people are making change across the globe is deeply inspiring.”

Zarangiz founded WoWoman, a platform to empower women by offering them a space and tools for professional development, following her experience as a young businesswoman in Azerbaijan. She wanted to build a community of women entrepreneurs and empower them through greater freedom of choice and achieve financial independence. 

Zarangiz attended the One Young World Summit in The Hague, 2018, as a Delegate Speaker on the education plenary session. She credits the help that she received from One Young World when preparing her speech as the highest quality support that she has received throughout her career. After the Summit, she felt the status elevation that being an Ambassador brings, which helped her scale her work even further. Zarangiz was recognised as a 30 Under 30 by Forbes magazine, and her appearance at the Summit proved to be a turning point in recognition of her work. 

WoWoman has trained over 10,000 women in person and an additional 5,000 online, through more than 500 events and workshops, ranging on issues from mental health, personal development, gender equality and business thinking. The organisation has launched 40 programmes and projects since its inception, including a partnership with Facebook through which they received funding to open W-Space, a co-working space open to women in Azerbaijan. Their coding school, Tech Tech Khanim, teaches different coding languages and design while they also have an eight-week entrepreneurship programme, WoWenture. WoWoman offers its own English language classes, and a programme focused on solving social issues through design-based solutions. Zarangiz has also developed a partnership with Visa in the She’s Next programme, which aims to empower women-owned small businesses. It is currently in its second year.

“I am very grateful and happy that I had the experience of being a Delegate Speaker, because the quality of support that I got while preparing for my speech from One Young World is still on the top levels of anything I’ve gotten.”

Nasreen is the founder of Empowerment Collective (EC), a non-profit dedicated to raising global awareness of exploited labour, forced labour, and extreme poverty. As a survivor, Nasreen founded EC to empower women and girls in disadvantaged, vulnerable, and underserved communities by providing a safe environment, entrepreneurial skills training in fair trade industries, sexual and reproductive health, and education. 

The Asahi team helped Nasreen create a strategic plan, focusing on three programmes around women and children’s empowerment. This involves breaking menstrual stigma by providing girls with necessary education and kits that help support them for four years, with 1,200 of these kits distributed as a direct result of Lead2030. Upon receiving these menstrual kits, the girls become ambassadors for EC and help spread awareness around sexual and reproductive health in their communities. The kits are made locally by women who also gain a monetary benefit. The second element of Nasreen’s work provides 300 children with educational resources. 

The final aspect involves breaking the cycle of forced labour and poverty through skills training centred around sustainable indigenous crafts and entrepreneurship. These programmes provide material benefits to participants and also give them the confidence to succeed. Since 2008, EC has empowered 5,070 women. As well as scaling EC’s work on the ground, Asahi helped Nasreen develop partnerships with fair trade companies interested in supply chain transparency. Asahi’s connections have also helped Nasreen substantially raise awareness of her work and the problems she is trying to solve, resulting in millions of views online.

“The Asahi team has just been so incredible since we got selected for the Lead2030 challenge. My mentors, my supporters, they are all very connected to the work that we are doing on the ground.”

• 1,200 menstrual health and hygiene kits distributed.

Thai San co-founded the Human and Hope Association (HHA) in Cambodia’s Siem Reap province in 2011, as a high school student, with the purpose of empowering local communities through education, vocational training, and community development. The organisation is run entirely by young local Cambodians passionate about alleviating poverty through a comprehensive approach to tackling issues affecting underprivileged households in their province. HHA’s educational programme began by offering English language lessons to the community before expanding to include Khmer, as well as pre-school classes, art, hygiene, community workshops, sewing programmes, and farming. Thai served as Managing Director of HHA until 2022, and he remains a board member.

Thai attended the One Young World Summit in Munich, 2021. Before attending the Summit, Thai received funding from One Young World via the 2020 Covid Young Leaders Fund for his pandemic education and prevention project with HHA. This programme educated 30,000 students and teachers on COVID-19 and hygiene, and gave each participant two masks and two bars of soap, produced by 45 women from the local community.

Through the work of HHA, 34 families have successfully transitioned out of poverty; 35 children have graduated from their preschool; over 600 young people have taken language courses, with 300 students receiving a scholarship and 94% of their programme’s graduates passing assessments. In addition, 117 women received vocational training through HHA’s sewing programme, with HHA distributing 88 microfinance loans to help these women establish their own sewing businesses, culminating in a 90% reduction in domestic violence suffered by participants. The organisation has also established 1,167 home and food gardens to tackle food insecurity, and provided training and resources to look after them.

“I really loved how One Young World organised the Summit and I learnt from the speakers. I was a recipient of One Young World’s 2020 Covid Young Leaders Fund, which helped me make an important contribution to preventing the spread of COVID-19 in my community as well as creating economic opportunities for them.”

Rez co-founded Refugees Seeking Equal Access at the Table (R-SEAT) formally in 2021, after six years of working for more meaningful inclusion of refugees in international and domestic policy-making conversations that affect them. Empower, her first initiative, has reached around 20,000 refugees, through mentoring programmes and workshops. Rez led the first ever Global Refugee Youth Consultations in 2016 and helped form the Global Youth Advisory Council to the UNHCR. She also co-founded the Centre for Asia Pacific Refugee Studies at the University of Auckland, a research centre focused on informing and developing responses to conflict and climate-induced displacement throughout the region.

Rez attended the One Young World Summit in Munich, 2021, as a One Young World Peace Ambassador and Delegate Speaker. The exposure to fellow Ambassadors and their work globally inspired her, and presented her with multiple potential opportunities for future collaboration. Rez was also invited to speak on peacebuilding and conflict resolution during the One Young World Peace Events in 2021 and 2023 respectively.

R-SEAT has been instrumental in developing mechanisms for refugee representation in four countries. These mechanisms are composed of a group of refugees that act as community representatives and liaisons with their respective national governments in the United States, Ireland, New Zealand, and Canada. The initiative is also in the process of establishing mechanisms in Colombia, Mexico, Germany, Uganda, Portugal, Switzerland, and Kenya. In addition to representing refugee communities, the members of the mechanisms advise governments and have actively facilitated changes in national policy, such as New Zealand’s refugee resettlement strategy. The US mechanism is also cooperating extensively with the US State Department on funding for organisations operating within the international refugee regime. Through R-SEAT, refugees have chaired forums in the UNHCR for the first time.

“The most valuable impact of becoming part of the One Young World Community is the exposure to what other young people are doing around the world, and the connections and ideas that come out of it. As well as the credibility that comes along with it, people trust the One Young World brand and name and what it stands for.”

Jemima founded Thrive Future in 2020, as a social enterprise to promote gender equality. She was inspired to do so after witnessing the challenges faced by charities aiding victims of sexual violence, and decided to leverage corporate interest in supporting gender equality causes. Thrive Future aims to provide in-person educational training for corporate businesses to tackle a wide range of gender inequalities. The organisation’s free digital platform, Thrive+, provides additional research material on gender issues in 186 countries. 

Jemima attended the One Young World Summit in Ottawa, 2016. After the Summit, she collaborated with fellow Ambassadors to establish a One Young World Working Group to End Domestic Abuse, which produced a document detailing the business case for ending domestic abuse. This was presented at the One Young World Summit in Bogota 2017, and resulted in a pilot training programme in London. Jemima also created the Thrive Network of Law Changers in partnership with One Young World, a gender equality advocacy network focused on taboo issues with 25 members around the world, including fellow Ambassadors.

Thrive Future has so far trained around 2,036 delegates through its programmes while the Thrive+ platform has 834 members and provides access to over 30 expert articles and more than 15 awareness videos. The organisation also runs the Mentoring Tree, a six month mentoring scheme to develop women's platforms in their workplaces, with 18 women currently involved. These women act as both mentors and mentees to ensure that all participants have an equally productive experience. Thrive Future has also published 186 country profiles in partnership with frontline charities. 

“Before the Summit, I felt quite isolated as a young person in this space since a lot of people that I was working with were significantly older. Meeting other Ambassadors in a similar stage in life to me was pivotal in terms of building a network. It gave me the confidence to continue my work and I have collaborated a lot with One Young World. Like the Law Changers from Thrive, a lot come from the Ambassador Community.”

Clayton has been involved in TRANSFORM, a joint initiative between Unilever, the UK Government’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and EY, since 2019, on top of his day-to-day role as a Customer Development Operations Manager for Unilever South-East Africa. Within TRANSFORM, Clayton led sanitation projects in Madagascar and Rwanda.

Clayton attended the One Young World Summit in Munich, 2021, during which he had the opportunity to discuss creating social impact with his peers from Coca Cola and Google. These conversations centred on the issues of plastic waste and pollution and were instrumental to his future work with TRANSFORM. As a direct result, he pivoted his attention from the sanitation space to focusing on plastic pollution. Clayton now leads TRANSFORM’s support for two enterprises operating in the waste management space in Kenya.

The first enterprise, Taka Taka Ni Mali, identifies and connects stakeholders in the waste management ecosystem. Through TRANSFORM, Clayton provides training, and helps waste collectors turn their operations into sustainable businesses by professionalising their systems. These collectors are also organised into Community Based Organisations to increase their bargaining power and aggregate and sell their waste in larger volumes to recyclers. With Clayton’s support, Taka Taka Ni Mali has developed a mobile application that automates the waste collection process from household to the recycler.

Some of the waste collectors Clayton has worked with have managed to scale their business significantly and become waste aggregators themselves. In total, TRANSFORM helps Taka Taka Ni Mali support over 1,600 waste collectors in Kenya through grant funding, market access, business training, sales and marketing support, and financial analytics. The initiative recently hosted the Crown Prince of Norway to raise awareness of waste management.

The second social enterprise Clayton works with, Taka Taka Solutions, is the only end-to-end waste management company in Kenya. They collect mixed waste from households which they sort and separate at their buyback centres. Since Clayton began working with them, Taka Taka Solutions has launched two new buyback centres, supported over 800 waste pickers with social benefits and capacity-building, improved their processing ability, and grown production volume of flexible plastic pellets to 150 tonnes a month.
Taka Taka Solutions is recycling flexible plastics, despite the additional complexities of recycling this form of waste, and expanding into refugee communities in Kenya to provide entrepreneurial opportunities there.

“From the Summit, I managed to collaborate with a few guys from Brazil, from different companies. I met a few colleagues from Google in the States. It gave me this understanding that I'm not the only person with an interest in sustainability and social innovation, and there is actually more out there. I've been invited to speak on several platforms because of me being a One Young World Ambassador”

Luis Felipe has been working as an environmental advocate in southern Colombia since 2008. Starting with a community radio programme in school, he later founded a television channel called Telecalamar to discuss environmental issues affecting the Chiribiquete National Park in Colombia. Despite being a protected area, between September 2021 and February 2022, over 2,000 hectares of the park were deforested [1]. In 2016, Pipe Q-ida emerged as a digital project within CoBosques that uses social media channels to communicate with local communities about conservation and environmental issues.

Luis Felipe attended the One Young World Summit in London, 2019, during which he was able to connect with other environmental activists in Latin America and the United States, which gave him new ideas and approaches to fight for climate justice. He has since received support from One Young World Ambassadors to develop his project’s website and has made joint calls to action with Ambassadors in the fight against climate change.

As a parallel project to Pipe Q-ida, Luis Felipe and the Cobosques team have set up seven schools in Colombia called the Guardians of Chiribiquete. Each course lasts three months, with nine sessions in total, and teaches an average of 20 children environmental education and the skills to become environmental activists in their own right. At the end of each school, 1,200 trees are planted, and through their work since 2016 the organisation has planted over 50,000 trees in 600 hectares. In addition, they have partnered up with 2,800 families in local communities to protect and conserve 21,000 hectares of the Chiribiquete National Park.

“One Young World came at a time in my life that I did not expect, but I needed that injection of motivation and it helped me see different perspectives and create connections that persist to today.”