This year, the community of leaders we have supported have built serious momentum, creating deep and lasting impact. It’s not just about the numbers but…

• Jenna at The Firefly Project trained 350 professionals to support 10,000 young people experiencing grief across 1,000 schools.
• Andrew and the team at Emoco improved wellbeing for over 4,000 pupils and helped unlock £2.3 million for place-based partnerships.
• Voice 21’s work on oracy is to be embedded in the UK National Curriculum.
• Together, our community of leaders made collective and vital contributions to the UK curriculum and assessment review to ensure education better reflects the real needs and aspirations of young people.

We took a leap of faith, together with our fabulous partners, Virgin Unite and the Ferdinando & Luigi Innocenti Foundation, and launched the Spark Awards for Big Changemakers, our pilot open-call funding programme. Through this, we’ve found six extraordinary changemakers, aged between 18-25. Between them they’re leading organisations that deliver peer-led, trauma-informed support for neurodivergent young people; turn climate anxiety into creative activism; provide safe youth-led spaces for healing and education; convert underused spaces into study hubs tackling barriers like overcrowded housing and digital exclusion, and equipping young people with media literacy and ethical storytelling skills. But together, as a collective of incredible changemakers, they have the potential to transform systems around young people: mental health provision, climate activism, community power, access to opportunities, career readiness, and media literacy. 

Being on a journey with young changemakers is such a privilege. 
Providing early-stage funding as the spark to realise their ambitions, supporting them through a tailored learning and development programme, and welcoming them to our lifelong community, is hope in action. Because in a world that is impatient and demands immediate results, we come back to three essential ingredients without which our work would not be possible. It’s all about the people, relationships, and trust. 

Relationships are a mechanism for change. Trust is the foundation. But building these things takes time and patience. And that’s where we’ve really had to hold our nerve. 

We fund system-shifting leaders by investing in their early-stage ideas. To do this and provide the continued support we know is critical for long-term change, we have to fundraise ourselves. We’re incredibly lucky to have a network of donors and partners that has been built through deep relational work. 

We build these relationships carefully over time; across sectors and between complementary but arbitrarily separated communities - funders, practitioners, young people, and philanthropists. They come to life at moments like the retreat we hosted in the Lake District this year. Over 30 of our network from different sectors and backgrounds gathered together, united by a shared belief in creating a future in which all young people are set up to thrive. Over two days of conversation, laughter, reflection and fresh ideas, we were reminded that lasting change begins when people get together to imagine what’s really possible. 

As for holding our nerve? Relationship and trust building take time with our community and with our potential funders and donors. So securing the funding to make this work a reality is not a quick or transactional process. We love the saying from Stephen Covey that “change happens at the speed of trust.” Every partnership, every conversation with a young changemaker, every donation from our supporters is rooted in relationships that take patience, courage, and time to grow. So, we trust the process, knowing that our approach will pay off in the long run. 

In 2026 and beyond, we will be exploring the power of funding a collective: how we mobilise, organise, and support our community of leaders, invite partners and funders to shape change together so that we’re greater than the sum of our parts. We will continue to champion our global community of thinkers, doers and changemakers, connecting leaders who demonstrate what it means to make change with, not to, young people. Because this year has shown us that if we lean into the spaces where we build relationships and trust, real change is possible.

The brilliant Big Change team bring so much passion for and belief in the change we wish to see in the world, and we are deeply grateful to all who contribute to our work. So as we look forward to 2026 we salute our community of changemakers and funders who continue to stand with us, trust us, and believe in better. We couldn’t do this without you. Thank you!