Paddington Academy students inspire the Prime Minister

Over the summer, three students from Year 11 at Paddington Academy, Shafik Ali, Julia Kaseem and Chelsea Philips, participated in a six-week programme designed to see how young people from urban communities engage with the environmental debate. The six week programme gave them the opportunity to visit leading companies in the country, to observe how the business community is helping society to adapt to the challenge of climate change.

Shafik spent three days based at Rolls-Royce in Derby, Chelsea visited Boots in Nottingham and Julia went to Investec, where she interviewed the Head of Corporate Responsibility to find out what the company is doing to be environmentally responsible. The three students then spent two days at the Royal Society of Arts analysing their findings and went on to give a presentation to an audience of 30 business leaders.

A film of the entire programme is currently being produced and will be shown on the Academy website. At the end of the programme Shafik was chosen to attend a reception at 10 Downing Street as a guest of Gordon Brown. Shafik was the spokesperson for the programme and he is captured on the Prime Minister’s right hand side in the picture below. Shafik says, ‘Visiting Rolls Royce allowed me to understand what big business was really doing to tackle the issues of climate change. To then meet Gordon Brown was a once in a lifetime opportunity, which has made me more determined to achieve the
best I can.’

The Prime Minister said that Shafik so inspired him that he wants the programme to be scaled up, with up to 10,000 green job placements for young people.