Hannah advocates for educational equality and accessibility for young people through the organisation she founded, the One/Third Project. She is passionate about encouraging positive mental health action for underprivileged and underrepresented students, by drawing on her personal experiences of leaving school at the age of fourteen, to influence positive and beneficial change for future generations. She aims to tackle the concerning amount of young people leaving education due to mental health difficulties and/or a lack of support.
In the first 12 months of her project she has worked with over 900 students and young people and is collaborating with multiple organisations, in order to create opportunity and community for young people to grow, develop and balance their situation with wellbeing while being encouraged to pursue their goals through social action projects.
One event of particular note is the newest and biggest, the Lead the Way Youth Summit, which will launch in August 2023.
Over the past 2½ years Sam has accrued over 500 hours of volunteering with The Scout Association at local, district and national levels. An Assistant Section Leader with 1st Bramhall Scouts, Sam leads weekly activities for around 70 scouts. This includes introducing Scouts to new experiences such as sailing or virtual reality; developing new skills ranging from candle-making to effective teamwork; promoting community engagement through charity fundraising; and, alongside other leaders, takes scouts camping, hiking and orienteering.
Sam is also Ladybrook Valley’s District Youth Commissioner, representing young people across the south of Stockport on the Executive Committee and taking on official roles such as judging the District’s MasterChef competition. More recently Sam has joined the national Queen’s Scouts Working Party, which involves representing the Scouts and assisting at high profile events including the annual St George’s Day parade at Windsor Castle.
Ishikka has founded Code Club, a student-led volunteering project that works with local schools and provides workshops to teach basic coding to young people. Ishikka has personally taken this from her original idea to a working programme of workshops. She has developed a full teaching programme which aims to give primary school pupils a working knowledge and basic skill set in coding. In doing so, she has opened up the world of computer science to young people from under-represented backgrounds. This has not only given them increased skills and a more rounded education, but also exposed the pupils to options available to them in Higher Education and potential future career options.
From the start of this project, Ishikka has worked tirelessly to build the curriculum, make school partnerships, and recruit and train volunteers. The volunteers are aspirational role models, encouraging participants to consider Higher Education for their own future. This is especially powerful for children that might otherwise not have many opportunities to envision university study for themselves.
Sarah undertakes multiple volunteering roles.
She volunteers with St John Ambulance in the role of Hospital Care Volunteer for Cancer patients and also as First Aider. She has also been Volunteer Leader for the Burkhart project which focuses on supporting refugee women with their mental health and well-being. As a volunteer at Girls Friendly Society she helps run weekly sessions with girls aged between 5-13. The aim of the sessions is to help the girls build confidence, self- esteem, well-being & resilience. In the past she has also been an English teacher at Al-Muntaha Tutoring, teaching English to disadvantaged students from Syria, Jordan, Palestine, and Lebanon.
Sarah is now starting her own Non- profit organization called "Humanity Endowment Foundation" that will focus on training university students to make a change in the world.
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