Making a difference...Inspiring young leaders with WildHearts

Jacob Ayre is the Community and Citizenship Officer at Wesleyan. Find out what Jacob got up to when he attended the WildHearts Awards Ceremony in July 2022 at the Houses of Parliament, London.

WildHearts, a non-profit organisation based in Glasgow, provides a unique, engaging, and transformational education programme for school students. Wesleyan has supported the charity's school programme since 2019.

WildHearts provides young people with inspiration, knowledge and networks. The inspiration to take action, knowledge to guide those actions, and networks to amplify those actions. The programme supports young individuals to create effective business solutions to help address the multiple challenges our world faces. WildHearts aims to create social mobility by delivering its work in schools located in low socio-economic areas across the UK.

In December 2021, my predecessor presented a workshop and webinar providing information on sustainable careers as part of the WildHearts Youth Summit COP26. By doing so, Wesleyan helped to inspire those who attended, and also helped in Wesleyan's quest to be a socially responsible organisation. This winter, myself and my colleague Dan Gamson, will be taking part in WildHearts Youth Summit during COP27, and the young minds will be helping us with our challenge of supporting the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

When I attended the WildHearts Awards Ceremony in July 2022, I gave out awards to the Hampstead Hall Academy and met with different award winners to find out what their ‘award winning’ business ideas were. I spoke with one group who told me about their ideas to use a 'special pad', which generates electricity. Their idea was to use these pads as pavement slabs in public spaces such as universities or schools, so when people walk to and from classes, the pads would generate electricity for the school; this would reduce the need for fossil fuels. Other groups that I met within the WildHearts Employability Programmes wanted to know about my role at Wesleyan. I asked them what differences they would make in a role such as mine, and who the Wesleyan Foundation should be supporting. The award winners told me that they were seeing the impact of the cost of living crisis first-hand, with their families struggling to afford basic supplies. To help tackle this, the young people suggested we invest in food banks, community tool libraries (where people can borrow items they need, which they couldn’t afford to buy such as electric screwdrivers and hoovers) and to help community groups deliver services like free meals, soup kitchens and social activities for all.

When speaking with the young individuals from WildHearts, the key message which continued to arise was including young people in the Wesleyan Foundation's work. They shared their ideas with me to help find solutions to community problems, their passion to try new ways of working, and the important insights they could offer into the Foundation’s work. This message is one which I fully support and hope to take with me into the future work I do with the Wesleyan Foundation.

The WildHearts award ceremony was full of fresh-minded, young leaders who are facing some difficult challenges in their communities, and I can’t wait to be working with the children at the next WildHearts Youth Summit event during COP27.