So my story of hopefulness are the the early educators, our art teachers and music teachers specifically here in the States. The funding for our art programmes and music programmes have fallen by the wayside in recent years and my sister who is an art teacher like so many in the profession does so much work in preparation, whether it be over the summer vacation or on days off, spending her own money on materials and coming up with curriculum to teach our youth. It's super important that we we find ways to fund and support the arts for young people. The ability to inspire and extract that kind of talent from young children or the ability to help them view the world in a different way through arts and music is vital.

There are many people that I have met during my fieldwork but the one that I would like to explore here is a cooperative that focuses on rewilding called Snowchange. They have worked in their community in the east of Finland for more than 10 years now to enhance the environment across the area where people live. One of the problems has been that the swamps have been turned into forests, which has disturbed the water flow and with heavy agriculture, the lakes and the rivers have become too fertile, fish are starting to die and other fishes are becoming too popular. Their work to enhance the environment is a very inspiring one.

my story of hope are the entrepreneurs who have a vision and a passion for making a difference. As a recovering entrepreneur myself I have deep empathy for entrepreneurs who are trying to have an impact as well as build a new business. There is a charity called the Queen's Commonwealth Trust, which was set up to support young entrepreneurs across 50 countries in the Commonwealth through funding, skills, and the creation of a network. By creating this community, and allowing the exchange of ideas, stories and resources, I feel really optimistic that we will see the next generation of businesses grow and take shape which will give a chance for other young people to participate and hopefully go on to become large companies in their own right. I'm a big believer in business as a force for good and I think the Queen's Commonwealth trust is is an organisation which enables that.

Health and Harmony did 1000 hours of listening to communities, to ask what they needed to make life better. They knew the problems ecologically in the terms of palm oil and deforestation but at a local level by listening and working with these communities they found out that the community did not want to cut down rainforest and wanted alternative livelihoods and health care. In response Health and Harmony have set up an entire clinic and trained Indonesian doctors to take care of the communities which has drastically reduced Malaria. Their empowering livelihood programmes have also led to people turning in their chainsaws resulting in the forests growing back.

I think what Future Fit have accomplished is the most amazing thing I have seen working from a corporate perspective in terms of understanding and measuring and providing a management tool for sustainability and regeneration. There's a lot of things going on but in terms of what companies can actually take and run with for measuring and managing their sustainability efforts, this is the best thing out there and they've done this with very few resources.

My story of hopefulness is a community association composed of indigenous communities, black communities and peasant communities along a new river in Colombia. They were impacted by the construction of a dam 20 years ago and at the beginning, they responded with strikes and anger, but eventually they organised to restore their livelihoods and created an association of 96 community based organisations, with the aim to create a unique sustainable development model under agroecological principles, with a unique governance system. In each of the family, or traits they cultivate more than 80 food species, avoiding chemicals, pesticides and fertilisers and are able not only to have healthy diets but to support communities around them including trading in their local stores. They also jointly decided to restore the river basin and planted diverse tree species to protect the mangrove forests with a joint action to stop these production by large trim companies. They ensure clean drinkable water in every household with solar energy and traditional water filters, solving a health problem. They use the earnings from the agricultural production into education and have been able to ensure that the young leaders of the community returned to the community. This is a true regeneration model to restore ecosystems and societies.

My story is the charity ocean cleanup who are developing and scaling technologies to rid the oceans of plastic. They have a crazy idea to tackle the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, which is hundreds of miles across and they are also sending their interceptors to all kinds of places around the world. The results especially on local communities, is quite extraordinary.

my story of hopefulness is found in the Kibera slum in Nairobi. Abdul Kassim initially ran a football team of girls and he said he came back after one summer break, and he had lost his entire striking force to teen pregnancy and realised that as much as he was trying to support the chances for girls in this environment, that education was the only thing that was really going to address that. So he set up a very simple classroom and ran around asking anyone who had any kind of teaching experience or skills to come and work in the school for free, which they did. And when I first met him he had around 25 girls in the school and didn't really have any great academic objectives, it was really just to try and keep the girls safe. Abdul had himself grown up in the slum but he was quite an affluent slum dweller in relative terms in that he was educated and worked for Kenya telecom so he had the resources to be able to leave the slum, but decided that he wanted to invest back into his community as much as he could. The school now has over 200 students and they are building their first boarding house.