I am most passionate when working on community development, youth engagement and campaign strategy when it is driven by collaboration and participation of communities. I’ve found myself involved in community building and organising wherever I live or visit – working with social enterprises, charities and young people in Oxford, Uganda, Argentina, Northampton and Brixton. I also really like singing, do a bit of spoken word poetry and dancing in street! Work-wise, I have managed the development of a social enterprise in Oxford – a ‘social space for social change’ called the Oxford Hub and the Turl Street Kitchen. and now work on strategy and organisational development for Spurgeons, a national children’s charity. I am a trustee for Student Hubs which mainstreams student social action and helps them effect positive change. I got involved in Reclaim the Power having been totally empowered by the camp at Balcombe. Reclaim the Power is a non-herarchical grassroots organising network for taking direct action on environmental, economic and social justice issues, working in solidarity with affected communities. We host an annual action camp at a site of resistance that provides an inspiring and empowering space for a large number of people to take mass action. I also am involved in setting up Christian Climate Action – a group of Christians dedicated to taking action around environmental issues, currently focused on encoraging UK churches to divest from fossil fuels.

As a Community Organiser for Generation Rent I’m working toward building a network of empowered and informed private renters calling for the reform and regulation of the sector. My role is to help individuals collectively challenge decision makers and push for the kind of local and national change that gives the tenant a fair deal, while evolving toward a sustainable housing market model. My role will interweave the building of a national movement of private tenants calling for improvements in the sector into one fully articulated community calling the government to account.

I am an award-winning Equality, Trade Union and Community Organiser who is currently working with trade union UNISON as an Industrial Organiser and is a member of the TUC LGBT Committee, GMB’s National Equality Forum and organises GMB & SERTUC young members. I’m also key founder of TUC Young Workers Month and the GMB’s young members’ structures. I’ve previously worked with TSSA, TUC, Hope Not Hate and UNITE.

I’m a lifelong Trade Unionist and community organiser originally representing finance workers for trade union Unifi (now UNITE) before being given a big-break by the TUC Organising Academy in 2006.

I’ve worked on the following campaigns: Havering Together for Public Services (2014); Reclaim Vauxhall: No to LGBT hate crime (2013); TUC Young Workers Month (2012-14); GMB Young Members (2006-14); Barnet Alliance for Public Services (2012-13); London Assembly Elections (2012); HOPE not hate’s Tower Hamlets Anti-EDL march campaign (2011); HOPE not hate’s Stoke-on-Trent BNP wipe out (2011); HOPE not hate’s 2010 local elections campaign; Unite the Union’s Working Students Campaign (2006 – 2009); Moses Must Stay campaign (2004); NUS LGBT and Further Education Campaign (2001-2004).

I have worked in campaigns for the past 5 years for a range of charities and campaigning organisations, including Friends of the Earth and the volunteering charity CSV. Most recently I worked behind the scenes on the huge NGO coalition campaign against the Lobbying Act, which was inspiring yet completely exhausting. I have been at NUS for about 6 months, working mostly on producing two web platforms that will form the basis of NUS’ General Election campaign, helping students’ unions and students plan and get involved in the election. Once the student site is launched (soon), I’m looking forward to being able to leave the office more often! The student movement is still something I’m trying to get my head around, but it’s an exciting place to be. There is already a lot of great campaigning that goes on but the potential for more is also huge.

Kat Wall has recently relocated to Bristol in search of the good life. After a couple of years working in London, at NEF, NEON and Compass, Kat developed her interest in the relationship between social justice and environmental sustainability. She is learning how to bring together activists and policy makers, academics and campaigners, individuals and communities. She is learning how to facilitate social change, to build a movement behind an alternative vision, to co-create a better world. (and to write biographies that aren’t this cheesy!)

Jannat works in the campaigns team at the New Economics Foundation, working to strengthen a community of activists from NGOs, trade unions, grassroots groups and faith groups that are campaigning for an alternative to neoliberalism. As part of this role she also focuses on diversifying civil society, and helping others understand and tackle power and privilege. She’s passionate about sustainable diets and learning from those around her.

Ed works for two political organisations. For the World Development Movement he works as an organisers within WDM’s network of groups and activists, seeking to maximise the impact of campaigns and develop a vibrant and engaging political culture. He is particularly interested in helping to diversify the network and strengthen the strategic framework that underpins the network’s activities. He also co-founded the Critical Education Project, which aims to develop radical consciousness through political education. The main project of the CEP is Demand the Impossible, a summer school for inner city London youth on radical politics and activism, which he helps to run.

Leo Murray is a climate nut who is leaving no stone unturned in his quest to find effective responses to the challenge that climate change poses to modern industrial society. Co-founded and was a driving force behind Plane Stupid; got taken to the High Court by BAA over the Climate Camp; wrote, directed and animated acclaimed internet short on climate tipping points, Wake Up, Freak Out – Then Get a Grip; worked as Lead Animator on climate blockbuster The Age of Stupid; co-founded 10:10 and designed its original campaign strategy; directed internet shorts The Impossible Hamster, The Vampire Squid, Carbon Omissions and many others for green NGOs; conceived and produced iPhone Bumblebee app Pooter; founded and direct wild play non-profit Monkey-Do CIC; founding director of the Edge Fund; supported NEON in its embryonic phase; conceived, launched and manage the Back Balcombe campaign to support Britain’s first ‘fracking village’ to go solar; conceived and am currently producing the Look Up solar prospecting mobile web app for community energy practitioners; and father to two wonderful children.

Leo is a serial activist entrepeneur and visual storyteller with a restless spirit of adventure, a lot of love, a lot of rage, a light heart and a soft tread.

I was born and spent most of my childhood in Nairobi, Kenya. I became aware of conflict at an early age after personal experience of tribal/ethnic conflicts, members of my family had been forced to flee different parts of the country because they were a minority tribe. Other issues of difference became prevalent during my school years as some of my friends had left warzones like Somali, Sudan, Rwanda and so forth so I developed a keen interest in trying to work out what separates/unites humans. Whilst in England, I completed my degree in social sciences and did my dissertation on the plight of asylum seekers and refugees in UK which was disheartening but a learning experience all the same. I currently work as an equalities and inclusion officer as a member of the racial Justice Network. This involves tackling racial inequality and social injustice head-on with systems, authorities or individuals. Through empowering individuals and communities with knowledge and information so as to stand up for themselves and have a bigger voice/impact. This also includes giving information to organisations or individuals as sometimes unfair treatement is born out of ignorance.