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.
This Month's Projects in Numbers
650 K
Students Provided Innovative Educational Programming
66 k
Farmers Given Agricultural Training
Meet the Ambassadors
He/Him
Matte Jockas - Uganda
Matte Jockas is the Founder of Wilmat Development Foundation (WDF), an organisation that empowers women and youth through skills development, advocacy, and sustainable livelihood programmes. WDF operates the Wilmat Skilling Facility in Eastern Uganda, where vocational training enables individuals in landslide-prone communities to use sustainable agriculture to gain employment or launch enterprises.
Recognising that sustainable change happens only when communities own their development process, WDF shifted from traditional training programmes to locally led community learning circles. In these self-help groups, participants co-design courses based on the needs they identify. To date, the project has engaged 15,200 women and youth in its programming and distributed 14,632 seed packs of resilient crops.
She/Her
Ally Zlatar - United Arab Emirates
Ally Zlatar is the Founder of The Starving Artist, a project that uses art to help people process emotions, communicate, and engage with their wellbeing. A particular focus is on refugee communities, where the project uses creative expression to overcome challenges such as language barriers, educational gaps, and limited vocational resources.
The Starving Artist has impacted over 100,000 lives across more than 30 countries through exhibitions, public talks, campaigns, and the establishment of a scholarship fund. It has published four volumes sharing artists' experiences of illness, with over 500 copies sold globally. The project has hosted over 40 artist talks and 20 exhibitions in partnership with institutions such as The British Museum, the Smithsonian, and TEDx, with more than 2,000 attendees.
He/Him
Shivad Singh - South Africa
Shivad Singh is the CEO of Head Start, an organisation that provides accessible and affordable education to learners in developing countries. It offers 10 primary and supplementary learning solutions, covering early childhood through secondary school. Its content catalogue includes exclusive licenses to over 30,000 videos, activities, PDFs, and games that can be used across multiple school years.
Head Start Education launched its digital platform with MTN, the largest telecommunications company in Africa, and peaked at over 250,000 paid subscribers. It is also the main education provider for Vodacom e-Learning, delivering content to more than 300,000 learners. Through a partnership with School in a Box, the project has provided content to over 80 school centers, reaching more than 5,000 learners.
They/Them
Karunarathnalage Lilan Udayanga Dayananda - Sri Lanka
Karunarathnalage Lilan Udayanga Dayananda is the CEO of Elzian Agro, a social enterprise that helps farmers optimize their limited resources such as water, fertilizer, labor, and land to maximize crop yields, cost efficiency, and energy efficiency. Elzian Agro provides customized farming solutions through easy-to-use web and mobile apps. They combine smart sensors (Agro-Eye) to monitor crops, AI technology to help farmers make better decisions, and automated watering systems (Agro-Mate), tailored to each farmer’s specific needs.
The enterprise has engaged over 60,000 farmers to train its machine learning models and continues to work closely with local communities to co-design agricultural solutions that address their needs
He/Him
Dinesh Jayabalan - Malaysia
Dinesh Jayabalan was the Organising Chairperson of the 2024 International Youth Day Summit (IYDS), an event that focused global attention on the priorities and potential of youth. The summit brought together young talent and multinational corporations operating in Asia for sessions on leadership, personal branding, and professional development jointly organised by two big companies in Malaysia.
More than 100 early-career professionals attended the IYDS, selected from over 10 companies, under the theme “Youth Today, Leaders Tomorrow.” External thought leaders were also invited to speak on succeeding in the corporate world.
She/Her
Plengrhambhai Snidvongs Kruesopon - Thailand
Plengrhambhai Snidvongs Kruesopon is the Founder of Care for Coral, Thailand’s largest youth-led marine conservation non-governmental organisation (NGO). Its mission is to protect Thailand's ocean health and environment through the restoration and rehabilitation of coral reefs. The organisation’s youth-based projects offer immersive, hands-on, and educational restoration experiences to inspire young people to become lifelong environmental stewards.
Care for Coral has shared its mission at international forums such as the United Nations and ASEAN’s largest sustainability conferences. The project has been featured on Forbes' 30 Under 30 and Thailand’s Future 100 list. Its large-scale, community-based ocean solutions were recognised by H.M. King Rama X with the award for the Most Outstanding Thai Youth Organization in 2023.
He/Him
Ognen Jakasanovski - Slovenia
Ognen Jakasanovski is a CDMO Partnerships Senior Manager at Sandoz, where he works to enable access to high-quality off-patent medicines for patients around the world. In his current role, he drives excellence in collaborations with Contract Development and Manufacturing Organization (CDMO) partners at Sandoz Global Development.
Previously, Ognen contributed to the technical development of several drug products in the Sandoz development pipeline in his role as Senior Scientist Pharmaceutical Development. He also played a key role in establishing the Global Development Culture Ambassadors program, a network of around 30 Sandoz employees who serve as cultural role models, provide regular feedback to leadership, and drive culture initiatives. In addition to his work at Sandoz, he has delivered soft skills training to students across Europe through several non-profit organisations and managed a pool of approximately 50 trainers in his past engagement as Training Coordinator at the European Pharmaceutical Students’ Association.
She/Her
Dora Palfi Osika - Sweden
Dora Palfi Osika is the Co-Founder and CEO of imagi, a startup providing inclusive coding education tools for schools and homes. The enterprise aims to increase coding engagement among girls and close the gender gap in tech. After just one hour of coding with imagi, 1 in 3 girls and non-binary children reported a heightened interest in coding, and 85% of students said they found coding fun.
The project collaborates with over 100 organisations, including 73 schools and districts. Additionally, their free resources have reached over 300,000 students worldwide. Beatrice and Dora, the founders of imagi, have been recognised as Forbes 30 Under 30 fellows, Cartier Women's Initiative fellows, and One Young World Lead2030 winners.
He/Him
Royford Mutegi - Kenya
Royford Mutegi is the Co-Founder and Managing Director of the Vermi-Farm Initiative, a project that helps smallholder farmers build climate-resilient incomes. The initiative achieves this through three primary innovations: a community-owned greenhouse (Vermi-Farm DigiShamba), a community banking model, and an AI-powered platform that enables individuals without smartphones or internet access to manage payments, savings, loans, and insurance (Vermi-Farm Yetu). The project has also recycled over 86 tonnes of food waste from urban markets into organic fertilizers.
The Vermi-Farm Initiative has engaged 6,247 farmers, primarily women, with participants increasing their crop yield by up to 70%. Over 2,500 farmers now access a digital payments platform, along with savings, microloans, and insurance services. Additionally, 86 tonnes of food waste from urban markets have been recycled.
He/Him
Andrew Hamilton - United Kingdom
Andrew Hamilton is the Founder of Just Include, an organisation that educates, empowers, and advocates for disabled people through legislative awareness and advocacy. The project hosts workshops on policy and legislative processes, provides a platform for collaboration on advocacy campaigns, and engages policymakers to ensure disabled people are represented in the policymaking process. Recently, they launched DigitAll, a campaign aimed at including disabled people in the digital space.
Just Include supported a Member of the Legislative Assembly in Northern Ireland to develop a private members' bill requiring public authorities to comply with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. In March 2025, Andrew delivered a keynote at the Westminster Higher Education Policy Conference, discussing the experiences of disabled students in higher education to an audience of 100 delegates. Just Include also recently launched the Northern Ireland Project, a 117-page handbook on the Northern Ireland Executive and Assembly with a series of accompanying workshops on advocacy.
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Bianca Reche - Brazil
Bianca Reche is part of the working team behind the Women in Deep Tech, an initiative led by Hello Tomorrow that highlights women working in science, technology, and entrepreneurship. The initiative achieves this by hosting dedicated events at the Hello Tomorrow Global Summit. Last year, it hosted a matchmaking session to pair experienced mentors with women entrepreneurs and a panel discussion that connected women entrepreneurs with investors, corporate leaders, and media.
Following this programming, Hello Tomorrow saw significant results in their Global Challenge competition: 53% of applicants had at least one woman co-founder, 61% of finalists were women-led teams, and 45% of track winners across 11 thematic categories were women-led.
She/Her
Andrea Remes - Mexico
Andrea Remes is the Co-Founder and CEO of Erandi Aprende (Together We Can!), a bilingual and culturally-responsive education app designed to empower girls aged 8 to 14 with creative skills, critical thinking, and AI literacy. The app uses project-based learning to encourage girls to become creators, rather than just consumers, of technology. It also allows teachers to assign curriculum-aligned activities and create interactive spaces where families can support learning at home.
To date, 50,000 students across Latin America and the United States have used Erandi Aprende. In pilot studies, app users experienced a 55% increase in classroom participation. Educators reported an average 40% reduction in workload, and 87% of teachers said they would continue using the app. Additionally, more than 70% of parents reported feeling more connected to their child’s learning process.
She/Her
Josselin Alejandra Hernández Altamirano - Ecuador
Josselin Alejandra Hernández Altamirano is the founder of BioConcienciArte, an initiative that promotes environmental education through the integration of science and art. Through her leadership, approximately 5,000 people, including many Indigenous community members, have participated in projects, talks, and workshops. Participants in her initiatives report a greater appreciation for local biodiversity, increased motivation among girls, boys, and young people to pursue STEM careers, and stronger community engagement in conservation.
She is a Biotechnology Engineer and Environmental Education Analyst with the Provincial Government of Pastaza, as well as a researcher in the "Biomolecule Discovery" group at Universidad Regional Amazónica Ikiam. She leads the project Venom and Biodiversity: Revealing the Secrets of the Amazonian Snakes and has published scientific articles on snake venoms. A member of the Llanganates-Sangay Connectivity Corridor Research Network, the Women Innovation Lab, and Fundación Waska Amazonía, Josselin integrates biotechnology, education, and scientific research to advance biodiversity conservation in the Amazon.