I'm looking for stories featuring

So my hopeful story is someone called Ibre who lives in a community called Bradford marches in Bradford where there was a very underused Park that had been the centre of quite a lot of violence. Ibre was diagnosed with cancer and basically had quite a bit of time on his hands so whilst he was in recovery, he decided to take on this little park as his mission without any permission from the council on the basis that no one cared for the land. One of the first things he did was to buy a chicken coop as something to engage young children but also the older people in the community who now come and feed the chickens. So there's this chicken coop and then he developed this park into a kind of peacock farm. So they're now breeding peacocks roaming around.

Phil and Wendy Wall started a charity called we see hope just over 20 years ago. It started in South Africa and there was one child in particular who caught their attention who they really wanted to adopt but were unable to so. In classic Phil and Wendy style what they did was rather than adopt the one child, they decided to adopt financially as many as they could. They weren't people of wealth but took their entire life savings and gave it away in ten pound notes to complete strangers. In large gatherings, they would give away a 10 pound note to each person and say please make it into 100 pounds and send it back to us. In doing so they raised millions for these children and today we see hope looks after orphans and vulnerable children across Sub Saharan Africa.

So my story of hopefulness is a wonderful man Salomon Rettig who is a holocaust survivor born in 1923 in Berlin. At the age of 10, his mother couldn't care for him anymore so he was sent to an orphanage. He escaped the orphanage aged 13 and ended up in Palestine where he lived in a kibbutz for ten years. He eventually was able to make his way to the US where he felt for the first time that he was held and safe in a place where he could thrive. He told me the story of his wife asking him, what you want to do with your life and he had never thought about this question his whole life. She inspired him to go to university as he was really interested in social psychology. Eventually he got his PhD and he shared how that was one of the most joyful moments in his life, to become respected and to see the worth that he could bring into the world. it's a beautiful story of trauma but also human resilience and what's possible when someone is nurtured and loved and cared for.

When I think about a story of hopefulness I think about what hits close to home. And so any organisation or individual or group who is elevating marginalised voices and individuals have a lot of my respect. One local nonprofit that's doing this is strategy arts here in Philadelphia who reach out to businesses and try to work with them to engage in hiring inclusively and working within the community in order to find job placements and opportunities for individuals who typically might get overlooked.

My hopeful story is about Rebecca Lolosoli who is in Samburu, Kenya. She is the female chief of the Umoja women's tribe, which is a sub sect of the Maasai Mara. And what's amazing is that she's been the chief of this tribe since 1990 which is such a long time ago especially when the Maasai Mara are famously patriarchal, and famously male dominating as a culture. Umoja is a safe haven for women, specifically women that are either being given up to child marriage or women that are abused or in situations of domestic violence. It acts almost as a women's shelter but it is its own village, protected and run by women who are the financial providers of this village. The reason this village is so inspiring to me is because just to set it up, took an insane amount of courage and strategic thinking in a place that's very difficult for that courage to be justified. But they were successful. Through Umoja, women have been able to formalise themselves and get themselves recognised by entities like the United Nations or other foreign nonprofits, and receive enough donations to build a well so that they don't have to be nomadic which puts them at risk down the line. So they now have a well, they're in the same location, which means that donors can find them or supporters can come visit them and I was lucky enough to be one of those people and for me, it's a story that is continuously inspiring.

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.

A few years ago Nana Eyeson-Akiwowo and her co founder started fourth phase, which is a brand that supports women after they give birth. As a mother to a five year old, I had no idea how rocky the road would be and how little anyone speaks of the fourth phase, which is when the baby comes. The best part about fourth phase is its community where you can connect with other mothers and learn how they're healing and how they are adjusting to things like breastfeeding, which was a challenge for me. I just really love what they've built. It's so thoughtful, it's so helpful, and I make sure that I gift a fourth phase box to anyone I know that has just given birth.

My story of hope is born over human connection. We had a young lad who worked with us who was kicked out of school at 15 without any qualifications, came to work for us and did a fantastic job and got a chance to go on the inaugural Michael Johnson Global Leadership Programme which led to him becoming an ambassador for a global organisation called Coaches across continents. At the same time I was connected to a woman called Dr Shukla Balls in India, who runs a foundation called the Parikrma foundation which is an incredible project set up to provide education for kids who live in the slums. Fast forward a couple of years, and we're able to connect, Jimmy to Shukla and now Jimmy spends time at Parikrma, teaching and training some of the teachers how to use sport to educate kids. All this purely through the power of human connection.

My story of hopefulness is what I witnessed in response to fires that came through our communities and devastated our region that resulted in 3,000 people being displaced. I put out a call on Facebook for people to join me in biking in water and supplies to the neighbouring town where access was shut off for vehicles. In that town disabled and elderly folk were stuck in homes without water, electricity and even news. Some of them didn't have any mobile phone or access to information from the outside world. Incredibly in the wake of these fires seven people joined me and we biked in water and supplies to this neighbourhood where we found individuals who were in real need and hadn't seen anyone for a couple of days. I put the call out for more people to join us the following day and remarkably over 100 people in my small town showed up with their bikes. We ended up going to 3000 homes and what was amazing was to see the way that people organised so organically, so willingly and have continued to volunteer with this bike brigade and volunteering initiatives since. After the fire was a commitment to build back better, because the people who were most affected were largely Latino families on the i-five corridor who were living in mobile home parks where the fire roared through. Many of these people couldn't get insurance because of US legislation around mobile home parks which inspired a committed group of people to come together to ensure that the future of the town is filled with these people owning their homes. Not only that, it was decided that the land be put into trust, so that we we stop the extractive behaviour that was happening before. As a result of the fires we actually emerged with a more equitable, just and sustainable outcome.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Paz is a social business, working in refugee camps who train refugees in cloud computing, digital marketing and data science and broker their employment with tech firms here in Europe. PAZ is a startup that is run by a really passionate leader Leticia and their main goal is to create job opportunities and connections outside the refugee camps, giving dignity to people but also remuneration so that they can start planning for a future life. Both PAZ and the refugees are paid by the tech companies who employ them which for me is a great example of a social business that is contributing to solutions.

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.