The Hauwa Ojeifo’s Global Impact Fund for Women and Girls, supported by its lead sponsor Melinda French Gates, in partnership with The Queen Elizabeth II Commonwealth Trust (QECT) will support the health and wellbeing of women and girls in the global South. This fund is part of a bold initiative to invest in young leaders and community-rooted solutions that address systemic challenges around access, equity, and care.

The $250,000 Global Fund marks a significant milestone for QECT and the communities we serve, enabling us to expand support for youth-led organisations advancing inclusive healthcare for women and girls across the Global South.

At the heart of this initiative is Hauwa Ojeifo, a leading voice in global health equity and mental health advocacy. Selected by Melinda French Gates through Pivotal Ventures as one of 12 Global Young Women Leaders entrusted each with advising a $20 million portfolio, Hauwa continues to lead with purpose, proximity, and vision.

“Commonwealth countries have such a vibrant young population; a melting pot of innovation, audacious solutions and urgency. Young people have always had answers to the big questions and solutions to the world’s most pressing problems. It is my hope that this grant equips them with the resources to reach their next big milestone in making change,”said Hauwa Ojeifo.

by:
Hassan Mujtaba Zaidi | The Queen Elizabeth II Commonwealth Trust

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To enable them to observe and contribute towards Commonwealth Day, the specially designed Peace Flags are being given to young people in Commonwealth countries around the world. The intention is to raise the flag on Commonwealth Day – 13th March 2023 – as part of efforts to promote 2023 as the Commonwealth Year of Peace across the family of nations.

Speaking on the initiative the Commonwealth Secretary-General, the Rt Hon Patricia Scotland KC said:

“Peace is one of the most important values on which the Commonwealth is built.

“It is fantastic that young people across our great Commonwealth family are uniting with us. It is our hope that by raising the Commonwealth Flag for Peace in each Commonwealth country on Commonwealth Day it will send a clear message – that our collective commitment to peace is unshakable.

“It is especially valuable that young people are participating in this event during Commonwealth Week, when we will celebrate the tenth anniversary of the signing of the Commonwealth Charter – the bedrock of shared values and aspirations which unites members across borders.”

Rt Hon Patricia Scotland KC, the Commonwealth Secretary-General, speaking on the initiative.

The Commonwealth Flag for Peace features a white dove of peace in the bottom right-hand corner of the Commonwealth flag, symbolising the shared values and principles of the Commonwealth, including co-operation on economic and social development, diversity, respect, friendship, and the promotion of peace around the world.

The Queen’s Commonwealth Trustis helping galvanise youth across the Commonwealth to get involved in the flag raising ceremonies as part of the 2023 Commonwealth Year of Youth. A young person in each Commonwealth country has been selected to help raise the flag and take part in the ceremonies. 

“We are delighted that members of the QCT Network will be raising the Flag of Peace in countries across the Commonwealth. QCT Network members are helping to transform their communities across the Commonwealth, and the Year of Youth is an excellent reminder of the change that young people can make for the benefit of society, and the need for us all to support them.”

Chris Kelly, Chief Executive of the Queen’s Commonwealth Trust  (QCT)

The Royal Commonwealth Society is also supporting the initiative by incorporating the Peace Flag into the Commonwealth Day Service, to be held at Westminster Abbey, London.

A Peace Flag will be raised at Marlborough House, London, the headquarters of the Commonwealth Secretariat, after the Commonwealth Day Service and further Peace Flags will also be raised in towns and cities across the UK on Commonwealth Day.

The Commonwealth Flag of Peace initiative will be delivered in partnership with the Queen’s Commonwealth Trustand Bruno Peek, Pageantmaster, in tribute to Her late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. This will be the first Commonwealth Day since her passing.

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Previous winners have enjoyed international acclaim, cash prizes and invaluable networking opportunities to help boost their projects.

Next year’s awards are even more special as 2023 has been declared ‘Year of the Youth’, in honour of the 50th anniversary of the Commonwealth Youth Programme.

Announcing the opening of applications on the eve of International Youth Day, Commonwealth Secretary-General the Rt Hon Patricia Scotland QC described the 2023 Awards as a historic milestone. She said:

“The Youth Awards are an important spoke in the wheel of youth empowerment. The fact that 2023 is the Commonwealth Year of Youth gives the 2023 Youth Awards special significance. To be recognised in the 2023 Youth Awards could change the course of their lives.”

For the second year running the Queen’s Commonwealth Trust(QCT) has joined the Commonwealth Secretariat as a partner to offer to one winner up to two years of flexible funding, worth £20,000 a year, as well as coaching opportunities and organisational development support.

Chris Kelly, Chief Executive of The Queen’s Commonwealth Trust , said:

“The Queen’s Commonwealth Trustis delighted to partner with The Commonwealth Secretariat for this year’s Commonwealth Youth Awards.

“QCT exists to support young Commonwealth leaders who are transforming their communities and provides flexible funding, practical tools and support, and a vibrant network.

“We are delighted to again be sponsoring a special CYA Social Enterprise award in 2023, the Commonwealth Year of the Youth.”

Prizes

Young people from the 56 Commonwealth countries can enter five regional categories: Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Europe and Canada, and the Pacific. An independent pan-Commonwealth jury will judge the nominations based on impact, sustainability, and innovation.

The jury will shortlist finalists, who will each receive a trophy, a certificate and £1,000 in cash, and from them, regional award winners will be chosen. These will receive an additional £2,000.

One of the regional award recipients will be accorded further recognition as Commonwealth Young Person of the Year and a total cash prize of £5,000.

QCT will sponsor a special CYA Social Enterprise award The winner of this award will receive up to two years of flexible funding at £20,000 a year, as well as coaching opportunities and organisational development support.

The finalists and regional winners will be announced during Commonwealth Week in March 2023.

Eligibility

To submit an entry, an applicant must be:

a Commonwealth citizen; between the age of 15 to 29 years; and have been engaged in development work for at least 12 months as a professional or volunteer.

Nominees must show a strong track record of implementing impactful development work which contributes to at least one of the 17 SDGs.

To be eligible for the additional QCT prize, applicants must be aged 18 to 29 years old, and the founder or co-founder of a social enterprise.

Nominations must be submitted and received by 23:59 BST on 17 October 2022.

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Highclere Castle Gin has selected QCT as their official charity partner and will now work in tandem with QCT to support young leaders throughout the Commonwealth with flexible funding, practical tools and support, and a vibrant network to help them transform their communities. As part of this Platinum Jubilee year, and to kickstart this campaign, Highclere Castle Gin will donate a portion of proceeds during the month of August to QCT.

Together, we aim for a world where youth-led projects receive increased support and investment, putting young leaders at the centre of decision making so that they can affect positive change for themselves, and their wider communities.

“Highclere Castle Gin has selected the Queen’s Commonwealth Trust(QCT) as our official charity partner. Highclere Castle Gin will work in partnership with QCT to support young leaders and to help further their positive impact around the Commonwealth. QCT was selected due to their outstanding operations throughout the global family of Commonwealth nations, home to 2.4 billion people of which 60% are under the age of 30. Highclere Castle Gin is proud to be a sponsor and promoter of such a positive vision manifested by QCT’s Patron, Her Majesty The Queen.”

Adam von Gootkin, Co-Founder & CEO Highclere Castle Spirits

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The Queen’s Commonwealth Trust(QCT) was set up in recognition of Her Majesty the Queen’s love for the Commonwealth and its young people. Since 2018, QCT has been working with a new way of grant-making to help young leaders transform their communities through social ventures across the areas of agriculture and food, education and employability, the environment, health, and inclusion.

QCT comprises a small team of staff with deep expertise in working in developing countries. QCT provides youth-led organisations with flexible funding, practical tools and support and a vibrant network of fellow young leaders.

“We act as a secretariat to social entrepreneurs around the world doing incredible things,” explains CEO Chris Kelly. “They are often solving local issues with local solutions, so we recognise that the expertise lies with them, but they might need help with organisational aspects such as financial management, impact measurement or safeguarding.”

Unlike many other funders, QCT focuses on achieving longer-term rather than short-term impact.

“Our aim is to strengthen the organisation and help them reach a sustainable place where they are able to carry on growing into the future,” adds Chris. “If we help them with these organisational aspects and give them ownership, we are helping them to do more over a longer period of time.”

Having recently added another 15 young leaders to an existing cohort of 11, QCT works closely alongside each of its grant recipients for two-plus years. It typically costs £45,000 for the trust to support a young leader during this time, including funding, technical assistance, and overhead costs – a nominal sum when considering what the value of the consultancy support would be in the professional services industry.

One such recipient of QCT’s support so far is Daniel Misaki, founder of Ihandiro Youth Advocates for Nature (IYAN). Born and raised in the Rwenzori mountains in south-western Uganda, Daniel grew up surrounded by lush forest and a rich biodiversity. However, with local households depending heavily on firewood and charcoal burning for cooking stoves and light sources, Daniel’s community has seen significant forest cover loss, as well as increased landslides and soil erosion.

Recognising that many of these issues were rooted in a lack of access to, and education about, clean energy sources, Daniel founded IYAN to empower the local community to protect nature through a number of conservation and sustainable livelihood efforts. QCT support is enabling Daniel to supply households with 1000 clean energy cooking stoves and 240 solar solutions, as well as increased awareness of environmentally sustainable solutions. QCT is also helping to expand IYAN’s reforestation activities, helping the organisation to reclaim unforested land.

Now that Moravia Yachting has been selected as QCT’s exclusive yachting partner, following many years of discussions between Chris and Moravia Yachting’s Charter and Sales Broker Alastair Callender, its clients will now have the opportunity to directly impact worthwhile causes.

“Moravia Yachting is highly honoured to receive this endorsement and forge close personal links with The Queen’s Commonwealth Trust,” comments Alastair. “To build and connect a network of philanthropists to one another, while importantly supporting the work of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II’s Commonwealth Trust, gives the company immense pride. It is extraordinarily rewarding to ‘join the dots’ between many of yachting’s enthusiasts and also shine a light on how the QCT’s young leaders are a catalyst for sustainable growth and positive impact. As a direct result, countless lives are being protected and numerous communities around the world are now being transformed.”

Chris hopes that the partnership will help QCT to fundraise and support more young social entrepreneurs around the world. “I think our leaders will be of immense interest to Moravia Yachting’s clientele, who might like to support a young person who’s making a tangible difference to communities with Her Majesty’s blessing,” he concludes.

Looking to the future, the partnership promises to bring about a number of specially curated fundraising events. With QCT and Moravia’s combined network and access to unique and special venues on land and on water, there are some exciting plans in the making – watch this space!

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Future Foundations’ (FF’s) mission is to inspire young people to achieve their full potential. FF’s vision is a society where all organisations are led by socially conscious people, with every young person making the transition into adulthood with the foundations they need for their future.

On partnering with QCT to deliver this programme, Future Foundations CEO Jonathan Harper said: “We are delighted to partner with The Queen’s Commonwealth Trustto support young people, to scale their Global Social Leaders projects and bring about change in their local communities across the Commonwealth. Together, we are championing the leaders of tomorrow, who will create a brighter and more sustainable world”.

Check out some of the initiatives that previous Global Social Leaders entrants are currently working on at their blogs page here.

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The partnership enabled TYL to provide small grants to young people in Tonga who were working hard to solve the issues they see in their local communities but lacked the resources needed to scale their efforts and drive further impact. Beyond funding, this partnership also provided these young leaders with an opportunity to share their stories and experiences with the world via the QCT platforms, ensuring that those who may otherwise have gone unnoticed were both seen and heard around the world.

Read on to learn more about Tonga Youth Leaders and the important work they are doing with and for youth in Tonga.

The problem – youth voices were being ignored

In Tonga, too many young, aspiring leaders felt they did not have the resources, opportunities or connections to fully develop their potential or have their voices heard and recognised. At a government level in particular, the opinions of young people were not being heard, or recognised as something to be considered when making decisions around Tonga’s future. As such, political engagement amongst Tongan youth was low and the one initiative that had been put in place to listen to young people’s views, the Youth Parliament, hadn’t sat since 2008. Tongan youth were left without a voice but desperate to have a say about the decisions being made for their future.

The solution – opening the conversation to include local youth

Tonga Youth Leaders was established in December 2017 to change this narrative, inspiring young Tongans to live a life dedicated to leadership and service, and enabling the voice of local youth to be heard and justly recognised by the nation’s leaders.

Tonga Youth Leaders exists to connect young Tongan leaders and encourage them to create their own opportunities to develop their potential and further their efforts within their communities, while also working with local and national institutions to ensure Tongan youth would be given a voice when it comes to the future of their country.

On the ground, TYL further empowers young leaders already addressing some of Tonga’s most burning national issues, by visiting villages, schools and churches in the areas where they work and conducting Talanoa Sessions with the local community. Talanoa is a traditional Tongan word which reflects a process of inclusive, participatory and transparent dialogue, with a purpose to share stories, build empathy and to make wise decisions for the collective good. TYL uses these sessions as an opportunity to discuss with young people their rights, as well as leadership and politics in Tonga. As a result, they are able connect these young, influential and powerful young leaders who all share a common desire to shape the future of Tonga for the better.

The impact – young leaders are being educated

To date, Tonga Youth Leaders has reached over 1,000 young leaders in their Kingdom and has educated them further on leadership as well as their rights as young people. They have also enhanced the discourse between Government, Parliament and young people in Tonga, and their input was instrumental in pushing for, and ultimately implementing, the first youth parliament session in 10 years.

TYL also successfully ran the first ever ‘Girls Takeover Parliament’ day in partnership with the Commonwealth Youth Council and Jasiri Australia in late 2018. This gave 26 young aspiring female politicians the opportunity to discuss national issues in a Parliament setting. Both this and the Youth Parliament event were televised and aired on radio, allowing the nation to tune in as it happened. Feedback was overwhelmingly positive, with most of the audience citing TYL as a necessary initiative to help develop Tonga’s young leaders.

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WE is a movement that believes in the power of youth to come together and create positive change for their communities and beyond. With over 3.8 million young people engaged in their programming globally, WE offers an unparalleled network of youth advocates, who are passionate about making a positive difference on the social issues that they care about, on both a local and global scale.

Keep reading to find out more about some of the young leaders and their projects, from what motivated them to start something to what their ambitions are for the future.

Partnership in action: Write About Me
Yolanda runs Write About Me, a project that addresses the lack of diversity represented in books that her school provides.

Tell us about your project…
As a student librarian, I am very familiar with many of the books in the school library. However, when I started looking closer at our shelves, I was aware that we only had a few books which seemed to represent me and my peers. This lack of representation has an impact on how young people engage with literature as they struggle to find stories and characters that they can relate to. With reading playing such a significant role in the achievement of both school children and adults alike, I felt that it was an issue we needed to tackle sooner rather than later and create an environment which better reflects the diversity of our society.

The project ‘Write About Me’ therefore came about for two reasons. Firstly, we wanted to encourage our school to actively seek out books from a diverse range of authors which included those from BAME backgrounds, are LBGTQ+ or from low-socioeconomic backgrounds, allowing pupils to find books which resonate with them more personally. Secondly, we wanted to encourage pupils from a range of backgrounds to feel inspired enough to write their own stories which could be shared in our library in a collection of short stories.

What do you hope to achieve through Write About Me?
We hope to encourage a new-found love of both reading and writing amongst our student body. We want them to know that their experiences are valuable and needed, and we hope that this project will inspire the pupils to read a wider range of books from a wider range of author and in turn, produce their own stories where they are able to create characters who truly represent them.

As school librarians, if we can expand our knowledge and skills about the issues the project wants to explore then we will know how to offer a better service and encourage more pupils to visit the library to learn more about other cultures through a wider range of books, but also ignite a love of reading in those who have felt disenchanted by what is on offer in library.

What’s next for your project?
This QCT award is providing us with an incredible opportunity to build ‘Write About Me’ into a whole school initiative, working in partnership with the wider parent/teacher community to connect more young people with the stories and experiences of a more diverse range of people. Our ambition is that all pupils feel represented within the literature available at school, and this funding will help us to achieve this goal.

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