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.
The Month's Featured Projects in Numbers
256 K+
people impacted by projects featured in this month's Spotlight
5500
tonnes of waste repurposed by projects featured in this month's Spotlight
Meet The Ambassadors
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Bradley Downer - Guyana
Bradley is the Co-Founder and CEO of the Obby's Humanitarian Foundation, a non-governmental organisation that provides educational resources for underprivileged young people and promotes work based around SDG 4, Quality Education.
Bradley is also the Founder of STEMMY Conversations Podcast. The podcast was created and hosted by a vibrant and dynamic trip of young professionals in the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) and Information, Communication, and Technology (ICT) fields. The style of STEMMY Conversations Podcast is an audiovisual podcast, and it provides a safe space to talk about all things STEM and ICT with the aim to encourage its listeners to become involved in both these fields.
Throughout all of Bradley's projects and work, he ensures that the core action is giving back to the community around him. His effective and creative approach to problem-solving and compassion has driven him to help lots of people across the globe. Bradley's work has impacted over 600 young people since its creation, and he has plans to expand across Guyana.
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Carolina Mesa Trujillo - Colombia
Carolina is the CEO of Megazul Colombia, an organisation that co-creates environmental experiences and scientific adventures to safeguard key species of the Colombian megadiversity (Pacific, Caribbean and Andean regions) and promote sustainable local development hand in hand with the populations that inhabit them. All resources acquired are directly invested in ecosystem restoration, in elements for the rehabilitation/monitoring of sea turtles/whales/corals/composting; in environmental training in communities and in payment for all their local services.
To date, Megazul has had an impact on 29 communities, 15 marine-coastal and 14 in the high mountains. Between 2022-23, Megazul's core milestone involved a co-created sub-brand 'Viajes con Sentido', with 'Tortugas del Mar Foundation'. The purpose of this initiative is to activate ethnic, community, and gastronomic tourism by generating spaces for connection with whales and sea turtles through sea turtle monitoring and release, providing environmental education surrounding the animals. The outcome of the work thus far has reached eight coastal communities to bring interactive opportunities to more than 130 children within the Colombian Pacific and Caribbean, including 48 experiential sessions for the conservation of these species.
Carolina's ambition is to build a country in community, from ecosystemic and experiential conservation, because young minds have the power to guide in the processes to build it.
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Dr Bamo Nouri - United Kingdom
Bamo is a Lecturer in International Relations at the University of West London (UWL). Bamo's key focus falls in line with the SDG 17, by promoting and maximising the potential of the higher education sector in helping Partnerships for the Goals. In 2021, Bamo established UWL's membership of the United Nations Academic Impact (UNAI) and has since been leading on implementing and embedding sustainability into the wider curriculum at UWL. Through this, sustainability is now part of the core business model, including a central reporting mechanism and an enabling environment that allows innovation to foster.
Bamo was recently nominated by UWL for the Times Higher Education (THE) Award of 'Most Innovative Teacher' for his work on embedding sustainability at the university. Bamo's work with the UNAI has led to UWL being officially ranked 17th in the People and Planet University League. The initiatives Bamo led and implemented significantly improved the university's institutional rating for 'Education for Sustainable Development' (ESD) by 60% compared to previous years, receiving in 2023 a 95% for ESD, compared to 35th in 2022.
Bamo's research extends into the achievability of sustainability in the domestic and foreign politics of the Middle East with a focus on how think-tanks and non-governmental organisations can lead through intellectual, soft power and social engineering interventions to achieve the SDGs.
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Tayla Bond - Nauru
Tayla Bond founded the Tayla Bond Nauru Project in 2019, with a primary focus on community work in her country. The first initiative of the project focused on doing beach and ocean cleanups to address the environmental challenges faced by the coastal areas of Nauru. Additionally, through their work, they aim to raise awareness about the importance of environmental conservation and encourage local communities to take action in preserving the island.
Another initiative under the Tayla Bond Nauru umbrella are 'The Lil Vahines' dance workshops, which provide a platform for over 120 young girls to learn and embrace traditional cultural dances from Nauru and throughout the Pacific. This allows them to connect with their heritage, build self-confidence, and foster a sense of unity and empowerment. Through 'The Lil Vahines', Tayla Bond Nauru promotes cultural preservation, strengthens community ties, and empowers the next generation of girls on the island.
Overall, Tayla Bond Nauru has been instrumental in driving positive change in the community of Nauru, creating a tangible impact on the environment and enriching the lives of young girls through shared cultural experiences and empowerment opportunities.
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Sakshi M Krishna - India
Sakshi is the Founder of My Earth, an environmental youth-led organisation that aims to provide a platform for underpriviledged young people to express their views and aspirations in achieving climate, environmental, and food justice. Through impactful campaigns, My Earth strives to motivate local communities to adopts sustainable lifestyles.
As part of her work with My Earth, Sakshi has successfully run five campaigns to advocate for a better understanding of food systems and planetary health, climate adaptation and mitigation and biodiversity loss and ocean health. In the campaigns, she has engaged more than 25,000 young people from across the globe through webinars, expert sessions and panel talks. Sakshi has spearheaded more than 25 webinars focusing on training young people in training and capacity training. Sakshi has also created more than 40 infographics to promotes the importance of food systems to achieve food security and nutrition across the globe. She has successfully onboarded more than 80 volunteers to the organisation.
Looking to the future, Sakshi has designed sessions to involve more than 15 experts from various fields to interact and empower young people to take action for climate and biodiversity. The purpose of these sessions is to ensure that the local communities who are involved with My Earth have access to the opinions and insights of international and well-renowned speakers.
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Pablo Marroche - Uruguay
Pablo is the Executive Director of DESEM Junior Achievement (JA), an organisation that delivers educational programmes for young people throughout the programme. The organisation started in 1990 and has since impacted almost 200,000 students in Uruguay.
Pablo started at DESEM JA as a JA participant. He then scaled the ranks from volunteer, to staff, and since 2015, he is their Executive Director. This first hand experience has given him the chance to see the impact of the organisation on young people.
As a global organisation, JA Worldwide is present in 115 countries. JA delivers hands-on, immersive learning in entrepreneurship, financial health, work readiness, sustainability, STEM, economics, citizenship and ethics, reaching more than 15 million young people each year. The DESEM JA Uruguay team prepares, coordinates, executes and evaluates the implementation of 25 different educational programs reaching more than 14,000 educational experiences per year.
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Jin Dawod - Syria / Turkey
Jin is the Founder of Peace Therapist, an award winning platform and tech social initiative that works with B2B and B2C, providing psychological therapy by matching therapy seekers with expert psychologists according to mother language (English, Turkish, Arabic and Kurdish).
Peace Therapist is a refugee female-led initiative that aims to provide refugees worldwide free psychological therapy services in its social business plan. Peace Therapist has made a significant impact on the lives of many individuals affected by humanitarian crises, including those affected by the earthquakes in early 2023 in Turkey and Syria. Through its response, Peace Therapist impacted 5,000 people directly and 15,000 were indirectly impacted. The overall impact of Peace Therapist to date is 10,000 people directly and 25,000 people indirectly.
Peace Therapist has been instrumental in providing 6-8-10+ session therapy programs to individuals suffering from traumatic symptoms. Along with the use of test and retest data, these therapy session have been reported to resolve approximately 82% of daily life challenges experienced. This indicates that the services are not only addressing immediate needs but also contributing to the long-term well-being and resilience of the individuals they support.
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Clayton Chaparadza - Zimbabwe
Clayton is a Project lead at TRANSFORM on a voluntary basis. TRANSFORM is a join initiative between Unilever, the Uk Governments' Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and EY. Clayton is currently involved in two initiatives, Taka Taka Ni Mali, which identifies and connects stakeholders in the waste management ecosystem, and Taka Taka Solution, the only end-to-end waste management company in Kenya.
At Taka Taka Ni Mali, Clayton provides training, and helps waste collectors turn their operations into sustainable businesses by professionalising their systems. With Clayton's support, Taka Taka Ni Mali has developed a mobile application that automates the waste collection process from household to recycler. TRANSFORM has helped Taka Taka Ni Mali support over 1,600 waste collectors in Kenya through grant funding, market access, business training, sales and marketing support.
Taka Taka Solutions is the only end-to-end waste management company in Kenya. Clayton's work has helped launch 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. They have also set up a Buy Back Centre in Kakuma, the biggest refugee camp in Kenya, to provide opportunities to refugees.
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Mactzil Ixtz'unun Camey Rodriguez - Guatemala
Mactzil Ixtz'nunun (Maya Kaqchikel) is the founder of the Colectiva Tuxinem, a collective of young Mayan women from different linguistic communities looking to faster a space for them to discuss and share their thoughts, lived experiences and ideas. They seek to raise the visibility of Indigenous Peoples, encouraging healing and strengthening cultural community ties while fighting racism, misogyny and colonialism in Guatemala.
To achieve this, Colectiva Tuxinem is to create content by and for Mayan women to claim their culture, deepen their cultural and ancestral knowledge, and reach more Mayan women and girls. Recently, Tuxinem created the 'Escuela Popular Rujotay Ixoqi', a space for Guatemalan Mayan women to receive sexual health and reproductive education with an approach based on the Mayan cosmovision.
Their work is centred around the creation of educational digital content across their social media platforms, on topics covering art, Mayan culture, and politics. Their biggest platform is Facebook with 3,800 people involved and Instagram with more than 2,600, and they are also active on Tik Tok.