The problem with youth charities is that you hardly ever notice them until you are in proximity to one. A winter coat drive in a school hallway. On a Saturday morning, teenagers wearing mismatched hoodies are sorting food tins into cardboard boxes that no one has bothered to properly label at a community center. Even though nobody says it out loud, there’s a feeling that something quiet is going on here. For many years, discussions about social change tended to center on large organizations, such as corporate foundations with glossy reports, governments, and sizable NGOs. However, the true momentum veered…
Author: Jeremy Stapleton
Only in late autumn in a Northern Irish woodland can you hear a certain kind of silence that is occasionally broken by the snap of a twig beneath a child’s wellington boot. More than any bell in a classroom, that sound seems to sum up what Alliance Youth Works has been doing for more than ten years. Nestled within the grounds of Benburb Castle, the charity has created something subtly ambitious: an educational model that treats a pond-dipping net with the same seriousness as a textbook and integrates science and spirit. AYW was founded in 2016 without much fanfare. Like…
Children pick up most of what shapes them somewhere between the climbing frame and the chalkboard. Teachers are aware of this. Parents have suspicions. However, only a small portion of what they actually learn is covered by the curriculum we give them, which is neatly printed, color-coded, and scheduled by the bell. Somewhere quieter is where the remainder, the part that sticks, originates. It often originates from outside. One type of instruction takes place in the absence of a teacher. It’s the lesson a six-year-old learns when she observes a snail moving across a damp leaf and understands that things…
When you consider who is truly carrying out the heavy lifting, it’s difficult to ignore the way the language of environmental work has been changing. Once a uniform of grey-haired scientists wearing field vests, the face of conservation has evolved. People who are unable to rent a car in some countries now own it more and more. Even before you read a name tag at a recent IUCN meeting in Abu Dhabi, you can feel the change. Fourteen young leaders out of about 1,500 applications advanced to the pitch stage, where they each had a few minutes to persuade a…
The way Bridging Divides works has a subtle stubbornness to it. The Wellcome Trust-funded project, which spans two cities that don’t typically go together—London and Tokyo—has been underway for just over a year. Its objective—to identify the reasons why girls and young women continue to experience disproportionate levels of anxiety and depression and take appropriate action—seems almost too lofty to state aloud. By now, the majority of adult-led research projects would have generated a glossy report. The rooms with sticky notes on the walls still have Bridging Divides. When you first enter one of their workshops, you’ll notice the little…
Something changes the first time you see a fourteen-year-old describe biodiversity loss to a group of adults. The talk no longer seems like a school assignment to you. You begin to perceive it as a silent, real-time inheritance dispute. That is the peculiar, optimistic tone of what is currently taking place in community centers, schools, and olive groves. Young people are no longer waiting to be included in discussions about climate change. They just strolled in. In March 2023, the Erasmus+ project “Way to Go Against Climate Change” brought together young workers from all over Europe on Réunion Island, a…
Sue Burston is a bread baker. That may be the least noteworthy thing someone could say about a woman who has quietly changed the way a part of North Northumberland views world poverty for forty years. But what counts is the bread. The dough, kneaded on a kitchen counter in front of strangers who attended a demonstration and departed after donating to Christian Aid, encapsulates something that the nonprofit sector has been reluctant to express. The kind of compassion that genuinely changes people’s minds and moves money tends to come in a roundabout way. Seldom does it appear in a…
Gerry McGovern’s wealth is layered, earned, and incredibly resilient, but it is rarely featured in bold headlines or highlighted in business rankings. It was constructed over many years and is similar to the cars he designed in that it is long-lasting, precisely engineered, and subtly elegant. Growing up in Coventry during a period when industry shaped cities and futures, McGovern’s artistic journey started in the mechanical lines of design studios and automobile factories rather than in art galleries. He built value through a career based on leadership, consistency, and long-term planning rather than inheriting startup equity or legacy wealth. CategoryDetailFull…