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## **~** The advocacy academy’s **~** 

## State of the movement 2020/21 

Unleashing the Power of Young People to Transform their World 

|**THE ACADEMY AT SEVEN YEARS**|**3**|
|---|---|
|A NOTE FROM OUR ALUMNI TRUSTEES|4|
|OUR STRATEGIC FOCUS|5|
|**PART ONE: WHAT WE ACHIEVED IN 2020-21**|**7**|
|**MEET THE FELLOWSHIP CLASS OF 2021**|**7**|
|HANDS IN THE AIR FOR OUR NEW FELLOWSHIP CAMPAIGNS|14|
|BODY COUNT|14|
|NO FILTER|15|
|HALO|16|
|CHOKED UP|17|
|**CAMPAIGN CASE STUDY: CHOKED UP**|**18**|
|**ADVOCATE CASE STUDY: KIN**|**20**|
|OUR IMPACT THIS YEAR|22|
|**THE ACADEMY IN COVID**|**23**|
|TAKING THE FELLOWSHIP ONLINE|23|
|IMPACTS ON OUR ORGANISATION|24|
|**ADVOCATE CASE STUDY: KAISHA-WADE**|**25**|
|**LAUNCHING SPARK**|**28**|
|**AN UPDATE FROM OUR ALUMNI COMMUNITY**|**30**|
|THE FIRST ALUMNI AGM|30|
|THE LISTENING CAMPAIGN|30|
|**LEADING AS A YOUNGER CHANGEMAKER: CECILIA**|**32**|
|**PART TWO: FINANCING AND FUNDRAISING REVIEW**|**34**|
|FINANCE REVIEW|35|
|FUNDRAISING|35|



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|RESERVES OVERVIEW|35|
|---|---|
|KEY RISKS AND UNCERTAINTIES|36|
|**PART THREE: LOOKING AHEAD**|**37**|
|THE FALLOW YEAR|38|
|A NEW CEO|38|
|OUR PLANS FOR THE NEXT YEAR|39|
|**PART FOUR: GOVERNANCE AND TEAM**|**40**|
|OUR STAFF|41|
|OUR TRUSTEES|43|
|GOVERNANCE|44|
|**PART FIVE: ACCOUNTS**|**48**|




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## **THE ACADEMY AT SEVEN YEARS** 

2020, where do we begin?? This has been a year of extraordinary growth for our movement, with new programmes, new Advocates and several high-profile wins to celebrate from our young people’s campaigns. It’s also brought a period of turbulence that has pushed us to rapidly adapt our work to continue reaching our young people at a particularly challenging time for them. 

In March 2020 we shuttered our Campus for Young Activists in Brixton and moved our deliveries, support and networkbuilding online for the first time. This year’s Fellowship took place primarily over Zoom, where our largest cohort yet joined us from their bedrooms across South London. It’s often said that teenagers are apathetic, yet the breadth of our campaigns this year shows they are anything but. Delivering **the Academy’s first ever digital actions** , our four campaign groups made their voices ring across the UK, on issues from air pollution to sexual assault in schools, to hair discrimination and harmful media portraits of mental health. The Class of 2021 showed that even in lockdown they can take on the status quo and win. We are extremely proud to share their achievements in this State of the Movement. 


The Covid-19 pandemic fundamentally shifted the ways we operate, but it hasn’t stopped us from proceeding with our plans for the growth of our movement. This year we launched our new Spark course, held our first Alum AGM, and ran a Listening Campaign with our Alumni community to hear from each of our young people how they want the Academy to evolve. **We also proudly welcomed our first two Alum Trustees** , Costa and Thalia, to our board where they are continuing to guide our growth and direction. 

Now, coming out of the turbulence of the pandemic, we have an opportunity to take pause and reflect. We’ve spent the last seven years proving that youth organising works and that young people have the power to change our society for the better. We’ve been steadily growing our community and engaging an ever-widening network of partners in the fight for a fairer future. With no precedents to follow for the work we are doing in the UK, we have been learning what works, what doesn’t, and what we can improve. 

We’ve come a long way in a short time, and we still have big goals to achieve. **We want to become a centre of excellence for youth organising in the UK** ; a thought leader, innovator, and training-house for passionate individuals and organisations across the country who share our mission. This is the right moment for us to step back and focus on developing the long term sustainability of our movement in order to achieve these goals, which is why we’ve 

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decided to take a ‘fallow year’ in 2021/22. Instead of delivering our flagship Fellowship programme as usual, we will focus on supporting our existing community, and on preparing our movement for the next seven years. 

## **We have a huge amount of news that we’re excited to share. Welcome to the State of the Movement 2020/21.** 

## **A NOTE FROM OUR ALUMNI TRUSTEES** 


We weren’t sure what to expect when we took on the role of the Academy’s first Alum Trustees, but nothing could have prepared us for the year we’ve had! If the tumult has shown us anything, it’s that we should be proud of our young people. We’re always surprised by how resilient everyone is. Every day something gets thrown at us and we manage to deal with it in an amazing way: for example, Alum campaigns like The Halo Code have organised, made money and been very successful, but they’ve also gone through periods without any staff support. We can be proud that we’ve managed without relying on the adults around us. 

Looking into 2021 and beyond, we’re really looking forward to Advocacy spending some introspective time. We’ll be focussing on what the community actually needs and how best to support their campaigns, so we can be in a stronger position moving forward. When you keep bringing in new Advocates, it becomes hard to do both at once. 

Part of this work is around how we resource ongoing Alum campaigns. To continue securing wins beyond the Fellowship, campaign groups need money, people and time. We’ll be using the fallow year to learn how we can best support them to build their financial stability, networks and ongoing partnerships. 

We’re also focussing on how 


we as a movement make sure that young people feel supported and held while they’re delivering this work. We’re putting structures in place to make sure that people who are in a really challenging, transformative period of their lives are able to maintain this kind of work. Many have jobs already, but what will it look like to support our Alums’ activism as they continue their studies and embark on careers? This is a big piece we need to work on. 

**2021 will be a fallow year for The Advocacy Academy. We will be taking the time to celebrate the last seven years of our Movement and develop purposefully, taking into account the ethics of our community and what we stand for.** 

**This is an important time in our growth and we’re excited to get started!** 

COSTA (Class of 2016) & THALIA (Class of 2017) 

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## **OUR STRATEGIC FOCUS** 

The Advocacy Academy is a youth movement working to unleash the power of young people to create a more fair, just, and equal society. We give young people with lived experience of injustice the knowledge, the skills and the confidence to tackle the most pressing challenges of our time - from breaking gender binaries to building affordable housing, to ending sexual violence on our streets. 

## **WE ARE BUILDING A CENTRE OF EXCELLENCE FOR YOUTH ORGANISING IN THE UK** 

We have big ambitions. We want to be known as the organisation growing the young leaders in every movement that matters, and we also know that no matter how successful we are, it will take more than The Advocacy Academy alone to realise the world we want to live in. At the next stage in our Movement, we want to become a centre of excellence for youth organising in the UK; a thought leader, innovator, and training-house for passionate individuals and organisations across the country who share our mission. 

We want our campaigns to shake the nation and embed youth organising in the UK for generations to come, just as SNCC did in the United States in the 1960s. Young people will inherit this mess - we’re giving them the tools to fix it. 

## **OUR COMPASS FOR CHANGE** 

We have a clear view of our destination. But with no precedent in the UK, we’re tacking through uncharted waters to reach it. We don’t have a map or ten-point plan to follow - so instead, we’ve created a Compass for Change to guide us. Our compass orientates us across four poles, with every choice we make guided by our Advocates Charter and our Theory of Social Change. 

## **WE ARE TRAINING YOUNG PEOPLE WITH LIVED EXPERIENCE** 

On the cusp of independence, young people are the perfect mix of critical and hopeful - they take the problems of the world seriously and are ready to do something about them. However, young people in our society are rarely given the tools to participate, let alone lead. Valuable voices are missing from the debates shaping our society, leading to policies and provisions that reinforce inequality by failing to reflect the diverse interests of all our communities. 

Today 88% of young people feel like their voices are completely unheard in society1 and 60% don't understand how decisions are made about local or national issues2. Worryingly, it’s those from less affluent families and black and ethnic minority backgrounds who feel least able to challenge the problems in their communities - young people from working class families are more than 40% less likely to participate in our democracy than their wealthier peers3, despite being at the blunt end of most political decisions. 

We believe that those with lived experience are the best placed to lead change, so we focus on building the skills, experience, connections and confidence of young people to organise in their communities and become life-long agents of change. Our young people learn to analyse sociopolitical conditions, identify innovative solutions to problems they have experienced, and run their own grassroots campaigns which seek specific policy changes that will benefit their communities. 

## **WE ARE BUILDING OUR IMPACT AS A POLITICAL MOVEMENT** 

Every Movement has a campaigning arm and a training arm, and The Advocacy Academy is no different. Most movements focus on their campaigns in the beginning, and then later develop their training and membership absorption arms. Because our Theory of Change holds that young people with lived experience should be leading our campaigns, it was critical for us to start by building the best social justice training programme in the country. 

1 “Stand Up and Be Counted” Sky News Survation Poll, 2014 

2 Youth Citizenship Commission, 2009 

3 Ipsos Mori's "Young People’s Participation in Social Action" survey, 2018 

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We support our young people to deliver Campaigns. More information on the campaigns delivered are provided later in the report. 

## **WE ARE GROWING OUR COMMUNITY** 

The power we are building is relational (among and between people), because history has shown us more times than we can count that well-organised people have the ability to challenge dominant power (power over people) and win. We work closely with schools, community groups, activists, and youth workers to grow our impact. We also open our Brixton Campus for Young Activists to other grassroots organisations in South London, building bridges between movements and offering much-needed space to organise our community. We have moved away from using volunteers and offer all our supporters honorariums for their time. 

## **WE ARE SUPPORTING NEW AND EXISTING ALLIES IN THE UK** 

We want youth organising to flourish in every corner of the UK, but we have always been a locally rooted movement. Putting a Campus in every town has never been our goal. Instead, we want to invest in the infrastructure that will allow us to activate new allies and support them to unleash the power of the young people in their orbit. Through our trainthe-trainer work, we will share our learnings, experience, energy, tools, and resources with other grassroots movements as they develop their own young leaders and campaigns. 

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# PART ONE: WHAT WE ACHIEVED IN 2020-21 

**This is our first year of Advocates to take their campaigns out to the digital space and shine!** 

**MEET THE FELLOWSHIP CLASS OF 2021** 

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## DIOGO 

I’m more confident in my ability to lead and collaborate with others and I feel that I’ve broken out of my shell. Advocacy has shown me the importance of societal issues and that instead of just talking about it, we can actually make change. 


## AMNA MUKHTAR 

This place saved my life and that’s not an understatement. It gave me community. It gave me something to fight for. Advocacy made me braver and more confident. I’ve been alone a lot, but perhaps I don’t like being alone anymore. 

## KAYDINE 

My time at Advocacy has really shown me that there are others who are just as, if not more passionate about social justice than I am and that's so important in a world that often tries to gaslight marginalised people. 


## AZARIA 

Advocacy is a chance to openly explore and develop your own knowledge of yourself and the world around you. You build relationships with amazing people, and the experience itself moulds you into an extraordinary person. 


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## KAISHA-WADE 

I’ve learned what it means to bring justice into the real world and how to be an activist. Advocacy forced me to look within and analyse how I view this complex world, and to always be proud and celebrate my identity. 


## NAKIEAH 

My knowledge has expanded and I have been able to learn about myself in regards to leadership style, strength and weaknesses. I can certainly say after the whole process I am much angrier, with more tools to do something about it. 

## DANIELLA 

Advocacy made me realise that being a leader is not about having the biggest voice in the room and at first that made me insecure, but eventually it made me learn to take characteristics from my peers. 


## NYELETI 

As cringey or over-dramatic as it sounds, the self confidence and ability to pursue setting up my campaign would not have been possible without the leadership lock in. Advocacy has had a profoundly positive affect on me. 


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## ANJALI 

I understand the world in ways that I never knew I could. I now feel confident talking to decision makers and activists far older than myself and know that my voice has value in these spheres that I previously was scared to be in. 


## LETICIA 

I have grown so much as a person. I feel powerful, as if I can take over the world. My leadership skills have expanded and being in a campaign has made me more considerate towards others. 

## KIN 

I dissected a lot of what I thought was me and instead realised that it was a performance to protect myself from any harm. Having that space to explore different identities and seeing everyone comfortable in that inspired me a lot. 


## PASHA 

I have found myself, I feel like I have a purpose and a chosen family who lift me up and support me to be confident and to be myself without fear. Advocacy encourages and empowers kids to make the changes they want to see in the world. 


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## JAMIE 

Advocacy has given me the tools to fully understand what kind of leader I am… we’ve unlearned and planned and campaigned and laughed and cried and bonded and I honestly would not be the person I want to be without it. 


## DESTINY 

I feel a lot less intimidated by meeting people who have more influence than me, because I know that despite the self-perceived power dynamics I have internalised, there's a mutuality between the two of us that does exist. 

## IFRAH 

The Advocacy Academy has allowed me to blossom, by providing me the skills I need to make a stamp in this world. It allowed me to explore myself, with no fear of judgement and positive and helpful criticism to help me grow. 


## KATIANN 

Advocacy is a place of learning, getting uncomfortable, rooting out internalised oppression. It gives us the tools to take down the structures that have stopped us from blossoming into our true selves. 


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## AMINA 

Advocacy has showed me how to be the best leader along with the best ally. I’ve learned that I can be the change I want to see in the world, all I have to do is find the right people, those just as angry as I am and together it can be done. 


## RAYYAN 

The Advocacy Academy helped me to progress towards developing a balanced leadership style, and taught me many different things. For example, disability rights and how people with visible and invisible disabilities are stigmatised. 

## JANE 

The experience helped me to see the fiery, leader side of Jane that I’d felt like I had lost for a long time. I got to meet some of the most amazing people and formed friendships that I’ll cherish forever. 


## MARCELLE 

There are no words that will do justice to the love I have for the TAA family. They helped me feel comfortable in myself, learning so much about me that I’m no longer scared to be me in a world of people who might not understand me. 


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## PERSEPHONE 

Advocacy to me, means freedom in every aspect of life. It freed me from the hurt I kept from my assault, it freed me from the loneliness I felt globally and it freed my mind into being able to transform into a space of complete love and comfort. 

## LENA 

I’ve learnt the importance of collaboration and not giving up at the first hurdle, that even if I have conflicting views with another person that doesn’t mean we have to shut off from each other. 



The Class of 2021 launching their campaigns in front of Helen Hayes MP 

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## **HANDS IN THE AIR FOR OUR NEW FELLOWSHIP CAMPAIGNS** 

## **(AND THE ACADEMY’S FIRST DIGITAL ACTIVISM!)** 

## **BODY COUNT** 

Advocates: Amna, Betsy, Kin, Jamie, Rayyan 

## **Transforming the way that schools respond to sexual violence, demanding that every body counts.** 

Schools have a responsibility of care to all their young people, but too often they let survivors of sexual abuse down through inadequate or self-regarding responses that cause further harm. Recognising a lack of strong leadership from the Department of Education on this issue, Body Count took it upon themselves to rewrite the official guidance and send a copy to every school in the UK. When the ‘new rules’ began spreading across Twitter, the government was forced to respond. Body Count later claimed this action in an article for Huck Magazine, explaining the reasons behind their hack and their vision for an approach to sexual violence in schools that puts the needs of the survivor first. 


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## **NO FILTER** 

Advocates: Amina, Daniella, Diogo, Ifrah, Lena, Letty, Pasha, Marcelle 

**Let’s de-glamourise mental health in the media. Switch on to what is really going on behind the scenes.** 

Mental health issues are a staple theme in modern entertainment, but they are rarely handled with sensitivity - let alone from the perspectives of the characters living with them. Whether glamourised, stigmatised or made fun of, real-life struggles are reduced to plot points and the stories behind them erased. No Filter led a four-day social media campaign to demand that the television and film industries take mental health seriously. Their action called on major TV broadcasters and online streaming platforms like Netflix to include trigger warnings in their show descriptions, and to bring mental health consultants onto sets to consult on the accuracy of portrayals of subjects relating to mental health. 

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## **HALO** 

Advocates: Azaria, Jane, Kaisha-Wade, Katiann, Nakieah 

## **The Halo Code. Diversifying dress codes and de-stigmatising afro hair one Halo at a time.** 

Prejudice in schools and workplaces against Afrotextured hair is pervasive, so it’s amazing that Halo is the first campaign group in the UK to tackle this insidious form of misogynoir. They created The Halo Code, a statement that commits signatories to embrace and celebrate all hair and hairstyles in educational and professional settings, and ensure that nobody faces barriers because of their Afrotextured hair. Since its launch in early 2021, more than 500 schools and companies have signed up to the Code including major employers Unilever, M&S, The Parole Board for England & Wales, The Co-operative Bank and Superdrug. 



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## **CHOKED UP** 

Advocates: Anjali, Destiny, Kaydine, Nyeleti 

## **No longer should we be choked up by air pollution. Let’s build a future where we can all breathe easy.** 

Choked Up is a group of young people of colour who are campaigning for an amendment to the Clean Air Act which will enshrine the right to clean air for everyone. They gained nationwide coverage for their first action, which saw the appearance of air pollution warning signs along three of London’s dirtiest roads. The group leveraged this attention to invite the four leading mayoral candidates to an online hustings on clean air in London, which they co-hosted with Client Earth, Asthma UK and the Clean Air Parents’ Network. Still a first point of call for journalists on clean air stories, Choked Up have partnered with campaign group Purpose and are continuing to lobby politicians for climate justice. 


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## **CAMPAIGN CASE STUDY: CHOKED UP** 

When I applied for the Fellowship, what made me angry was the fact that the air where I live is so terrible that it actually killed one of my classmates at primary school and that nothing had been done about it since then. Knowing that I was living in an area with absolutely toxic air - although we hadn’t been told about it and these facts had been concealed from us - that was the anger I shared in the interview. I talked about Ella Kissi-Debrah, how devastating it was that this nine-year-old girl had died from an asthma attack, how her loss was felt by the community, and how it had really made me start thinking about air pollution in a different way. 

I’d attended school with Ella, who was the first person in the world to have air pollution listed on her death certificate. I know her mum quite well so I’d been following her campaign, attending talks with her and learning more about air pollution in our area. Before Advocacy I’d done some work with Teach the Future and the Youth Strike movement. Those experiences taught me that organising with hundreds of people can get chaotic very quickly, especially when you only know each other online! 


On the Fellowship, I joined a group with Destiny and Nyeleti because they also wanted to campaign on climate issues. We decided to focus on clean air, because we are young people of colour who all live along one of London’s busiest roads We’ve seen that it’s mainly deprived communities and people of colour who are living in polluted areas: clean air is a social justice issue as well. 

**For our action we wanted to do something to make air pollution visible.** One of the issues is that people can’t see it, so they don’t think about it and they don’t know it’s a problem. Someone suggested making road signs and we decided it was a perfect idea. We realised we could subvert this type of messaging to show the dangers of cars, by putting our own signs up along major arteries in London. 

We looked up different designs and found one we liked, which we then put into Photoshop and started coming up with our own message. The finished signs were massive! I picked two of them up from the Campus and they were sticking out of my bag, people were staring at me on the train. Their size meant that you could not miss them, which was quite cool. 

We wanted to do our action in late December but that was when all the lockdown restrictions came into place so we delayed it. Then we were contacted by Purpose, who had learned about our campaign through an article we’d done for the Times. They were campaigning on clean air for the mayoral elections, and they asked us to work with them because there just aren’t other groups like us, in spite of air pollution affecting young people and people of colour the most. **Ours is a voice that was completely missing from the clean air movement** : it’s so white that it’s actually insane! There have been so few times during our campaigning when there have been other people of colour in the room. 

We worked with Purpose to put up a pair of big white lungs in Putney, that were designed to turn grey as they absorbed air pollution. It’s a really cool tactic because it reflects your own lungs turning grey. They also paid for some more signs for our road sign action and helped us to put them up. NEON was very helpful too - they gave us media training, contacts and press lists, and we got a lot of press through them. I wrote an article in The Guardian and we were interviewed on BBC and LBC. 18 

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We finally put the signs up in March, to coincide with the mayoral elections in London. They went up along busy roads in Whitechapel, Lewisham and Brixton and it was nice that a lot of them were not taken down immediately. The council in Lewisham made an active decision to leave them up for a couple of months - I think because Lewisham has been called out a lot recently and it’s where Ella lived. It was a shame when the signs went because I enjoyed walking past them and seeing them on my street! Another nice thing was that I never saw any graffiti on them. 

**We gained a lot more press attention from the action, so we leveraged it to get into rooms with politicians and talk to them about clean air.** We saw that quite a few of the mayoral candidates had actually tweeted about the action while setting out their plans for backing clean air, so in partnership with Purpose, we invited them all to a hustings to talk about their strategies and grill them on what they plan to do. A lot of them hadn't been clear before on their plans, so it was really good to have a space that forced them to think about it. 

We are still getting press now. I’m doing something with BBC Asian Network soon and we're writing an article for Galdem. We often get approached by journalists asking for quotes or to find out what we’re going to do next. By this point we’re quite used to it, we’ve been building up our media skills and we know what kind of messages we want to get out. It’s still quite weird getting requests from the BBC when I’m in school and having to say, I’m in full-time education actually, so no?! 

What is next for Choked Up? Nyeleti and I are going into Year 13 and there's a lot of UCAS stuff for us to do, and Destiny is starting their first year at Oxford, so we’ve made a conscious decision to cut back on the amount of media we’re doing and focus on actual political lobbying instead. The way we’ve viewed this past year is that we’ve got the campaign onto people’s radars and the media’s been really helpful in that. Now, lots of politicians know about our campaign and are willing to talk to us about clean air. People like Sadiq Khan know who we are and will have a meeting with us if we ask. 

We’re also sorting our internals. We’ve got quite a bit of money now so we’re working on setting up an account for our campaign within the Advocacy account. We might use it to fund an action in the future, we’re not sure yet. We’ll see how it goes with the political lobbying: if that doesn’t work out then we’ll step back and think of other ways to get politicians to listen to us. 

Ella’s mum has approached us to do some work with her on Ella’s Law, which she is pushing through this coming year. We’ve had a really good relationship with her which I’m glad about. 

I’m not quite sure how I would have started Choked Up without the Fellowship experience, because it taught me how to run a campaign: what to do in terms of actions, defining what our end goal is, making sure we had a clear plan. There were Friday sessions on media, internal organisation, stuff that I wouldn't have thought I needed before but I’ve learned it actually makes up a big part of campaigning. It was really good for preparing us to go out into the wider world of campaigning and know how to work with people in a good way. 

- ANJALI 


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## **ADVOCATE CASE STUDY: KIN** 

It took me a very long time to accept who I am. I grew up in a Latin American household where sexuality was spoken about but not necessarily accepted. The expectation was that I’d still end up marrying a boy. But with my trans identity, that was completely different: that was like a whole new world that I’d unlocked and **it was very difficult for me to maintain both sides of my identity** - my sexuality and gender identity and also my Latin American side. 

When I went to functions, I felt like I almost had to give up one side of me to be able to converse with my family. I was living a double life and I just got really tired and angry. I felt like I was walking down the road with no one to hold my hand, and it was a really lonely journey. In my application to Advocacy, I wrote about how important it is for people like me to have someone to be there with them, and that I wanted to be that someone for others later on. 

I knew about Advocacy because my sister Celine had done the Fellowship three years earlier. I remember her coming back each day from a different coffee shop or area of London (this was before the Campus) and telling me all these stories. So I waited for three years, then when the opportunity presented I said okay, let’s go! 

Alas, running around coffee shops was not on the cards for us. It’s ironic that Gen Z had to do our Fellowship through Zoom, it matches our brand! We still got really close though, and I can’t explain why. I think it’s because we were in the comfort of our own homes so you don’t really mask anything - this is literally my bed, you can see everything. 

The Changemakers kept asking us to turn on our cameras, which back then was really annoying, like I don’t want to if I don’t look good today! But I can see the importance of just being able to see each other’s faces. The whole thing on Zoom was kind of a mess sometimes but overall it was still really fun and inspiring. 

**The Fellowship was the first time I truly began to transition** , I would say. I already used they/them pronouns, but this was the first introduction I’d taken towards meeting myself and allowing other people to meet the real me. 

I changed my name two days into the Fellowship, because I was getting very dysphoric hearing my birth name. I’d chosen my name ages ago and had been waiting for the right time. When I announced it, everyone was really cool about it. They were like oh, you want to be called Kin? And I was like, yeah. That was it! 

I wanted to do a campaign on gender identity and representation, but there wasn’t anyone else on my cohort to make a group with on that. There were quite a few of us who were angry about the way that sexual violence is handled in the education system, so we were put together. I brought up the fact that my sexual violence is obviously not to do with being a woman, and how a previous survivor support group had dismissed my experience because I’m nonbinary, which was horrible. 

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I raised the need to create a trans safe space, and everyone else agreed, saying “don’t worry, we’ll include you”. It’s funny to think about that wording. I know it wasn’t done intentionally but it was striking to hear. **I thought, yeah, I have to be included.** 

So, Body Count was born. I don’t think Advocacy’s done a sexual violence campaign before, so we had a few issues with our speeches before Parliament Day. We’d written what we wanted to say, some of which was very poetic, but when it came back from the speechwriters we were working with, the words had got twisted in a very weird way. They turned our ideas into a proper ‘speech’ but it wasn’t how we’d wanted to portray our experiences. A lot of us were speaking about this for the first time, so we almost wanted it to be perfect, because what happened to us wasn’t perfect. There’s 

also a whole point about being able to control your narrative, so not to have a speech we were satisfied with was a really big blow for us. We weren’t happy, but we decided to just do the speech on the day because ultimately we had a goal, and that was still the same. 


When it was done, we all huddled together as a group and we realised that none of us had cried. I think that speaks volumes about how Advocacy can hold you and hold a space for you, so you don’t feel overwhelmed. **You just feel safe to speak about your experiences and there’s still emotions and trauma attached to those, but you’re safe.** 

Intimacy is a big thing in terms of sexual violence and my experience of being robbed of it, so I found running the campaign scary because it forced me to be intimate with my experience all over again. We had good people around us - our campaign group, Liz and Molly, and people from other campaigns, and there were daily check-ins and mentoring. 

We felt protected, but not in a way that was inhibiting. It was like we were an egg - we were fragile, but you don’t know what’s inside the egg, it could be a dinosaur! Occasionally we would pull out of interviews because it would get overwhelming or triggering, and that was always a completely valid response. Sometimes I just really didn’t want to talk about my experience of sexual abuse. Like I said in my speech, I don’t want it to be the most memorable thing of myself. I wanted the focus to be on, how are they moving forward from their abuse? What are they changing? 

I always tell everyone that the Fellowship was well worth the wait, even though it happened over Zoom. I feel like there’s a foundation that doesn’t change, there’s still the community, the mind-blowing moments of self-realisation and the skills you gain. Recently, I had a really bad experience at a job when I got dragged out in front of my co-workers by my manager. I remember sitting in the staffroom toilets and crying. One of my co-workers was like, “you’re ok, sometimes you’re going to get customers who say horrible things to you”. But that wasn’t the point. I don’t care about what he said, it was the action he took and the fact that after that, my safety was in jeopardy. 

When I wrote my resignation email, it was the first time since the Fellowship that I had to gather and facilitate myself. I thought, what has Advocacy taught you? **Advocate for yourself, but also protect yourself and understand that what happened was wrong.** How are you going to explain this to people in a way that gets your point across? It made me realise how grateful I am for Advocacy. If I hadn’t done the Fellowship, I probably would have stayed in that job and carried on feeling unsafe. I wouldn’t have understood that there was better out there. 

I’m working for the Alumni Festival as a photographer at the moment, and I’d love to stick with Advocacy in terms of the creative side for now. Later down the line, who knows? 

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## **OUR IMPACT THIS YEAR** 

We take impact evaluation at The Advocacy Academy extremely seriously and have developed a detailed impactmeasurement process with the Dartington Social Research Unit. We use the New Philanthropy Capital Impact Cycle - Plan, Do, Assess, Review - to draw on what we learn, compare against our KPIs, and improve our services for the next cohort of young people. 

We evaluate our success through three lenses: the impact of our pedagogy; the strength of our community; and the lasting change we create in the world. 

We are currently in the process of obtaining the London Youth Quality Mark for our trainings and have achieved Level One accreditation of Project Oracle with the Centre for Youth Impact. 

## **1. The impact of our pedagogy** 

We want each Advocate to graduate with the skills and networks to become passionate and effective leaders. Each of our activities work together to bring about our 65 learning outcomes which sit across five categories: knowledge and insight, skills, character, networks and access, and active citizenship. We use pre- and post- programme impact surveys, alongside one-to-one feedback sessions to monitor individual progress and allow for self-evaluation. 

For the Fellowship Class of 2021, our aim was for 75% of participants to improve across the following metrics. We exceeded across almost all of our KPIs. Specifically, our pre-and post- questionnaires showed that: 

- 100% were committed to voting in the next Parliamentary election 

- 77% talk to their teachers, parents and friends more about political/social issues 

- 100% felt more able to talk confidently about a variety of social and political issues 

- 60% said they feel they have significantly more of a community where they feel safe and accepted 

- 100% felt more driven to achieve the change they wanted to see 

- 91% said they were more likely to grab opportunities even if they are high-risk and might lead to failure 

- 100% feel more able to be actively involved in their community 

- 100% felt confident in creating a strategic campaign to address problems in their community. 

## **2. The strength of our community** 

Fostering community and building networks is critical to achieving change. The more Alumni, the bigger and stronger our movement. Each cohort learns and grows together, and is encouraged to guide and inspire future generations. We track data on the number of participants at our alumni events, and on those who re-join the programme to become Changemakers. 

During FY21 our records and participation numbers showed that: 

- The Class of 2021 was our biggest Fellowship cohort yet with 22 Advocates from 13 schools, among whom 18 identified as BAME and 8 identified as LGBTQ+ 

- We ran two pilots for our new Spark programme, bringing in 12 new Sparkees 

- We appointed two new Alum Trustees to our Board 

- 11 Alumni were trained through the Younger Changemaker Apprenticeship, allowing us to meet our target of bringing the total number of young people trained to 28 

- 5 Alumni joined the Fellowship programme as Activists-in-Residence to share their expertise with the new Class of Advocates, which was less than our target of 10. 

## **3. Lasting change in the world** 

We track the real world impact our Advocates deliver during and after their time with us. We are beginning to see the ripples of change our Advocates are creating, however we currently don’t hold KPIs for this area. More info on our campaigns can be found elsewhere in the document. 

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## **THE ACADEMY IN COVID** 

**The young people we work with have been disproportionately affected by the Covid-19 pandemic.** Many come from families of key workers who have been particularly exposed to the virus, while lockdowns have exacerbated existing problems with overcrowding, access to laptops to complete schoolwork, and for some of our LGBTQ+ young people, the loss of important support networks in unsafe home environments. 

As a youth organising movement, we have previously focussed on in-person meetings to build and sustain our community. Facing significant disruption to our deliveries, we had to adapt rapidly to meet our young people’s changing needs. At the same time, **we showed that youth organising was meant for this moment** . The slow, often painstaking approach we’ve taken to relationship building over years has resulted in a community of young people that can come together with us, our partners and each other, to share support and continue their campaigning work during the most challenging times. While models of rapid mobilisation have struggled to gain momentum, those relationships that have already been built, tried and tested are proving their strength and value. 

In spite of the disruptions they faced at home, school and university, our Alums continued to step up during the pandemic. New campaign group Influuenzers reached out to offer online support to their communities, while ICFree worked hard to raise awareness of the disproportionate targeting of young black people by the police when enforcing lockdown measures. These are critically important campaigns, launched at a time when a number of civic institutions such as Liberty and CitizensUK were expressing increasing concern at the emergency Covid measures and responses being rolled out. 

## **TAKING THE FELLOWSHIP ONLINE** 

Hoping that we wouldn’t need to use it, in early 2020 we developed a plan for moving the Fellowship online. By the time it became clear that the pandemic was here to stay, we were ready to go with a new version of the programme that retained the interactive and community-building focus of our deliveries but in a different format. We provided laptops and internet connections to those that needed them, and sent out packs to each of the Advocates containing craft materials, room decorations and (most importantly) sweets. 


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**The Summer Residential for the Class of 2021 was replaced by a first-day gathering in person, followed by 11 days of Zoom-based deliveries.** Days on a typical residential are long and intensive, but we’d already discovered the perils of ‘Zoom fatigue’ through our earlier outreach work. We condensed the sessions to make them more manageable, and the Changemakers made sure there were plenty of opportunities for everyone to move about and take breaks. We also delivered sessions for the first time on digital campaigning, which became a key feature of the actions. 

On Parliament Day, the Advocates launched their campaigns in person to Helen Hayes MP at Peckham Levels, in an event that we live-streamed to families and friends at home. The subsequent two ‘residentials’ responded to changes in the country’s lockdown status with a mixture of Zoom and in-person meetings, with staff putting in place Covid precautions where it was possible for us to physically gather. 

**The Graduation Ceremony was delivered as an entirely online event** , for which each of the campaigns created a video showcasing their cause, their work and their achievements. In spite of an unconventional Fellowship and the additional challenges they faced, the Class of 2021 has thrived and launched four brilliant campaigns. We are incredibly proud of their achievements. 

## **IMPACTS ON OUR ORGANISATION** 

In order to adapt rapidly in response to our young people’s changing needs in the pandemic, we have been compelled to postpone or cancel five deliveries that we’d planned for 2020. This included short residential courses for young people in Brixton and Luton; our Campaign Collectives week; a workshop with the Luton Young People’s Council; and a train-the-trainer paid workshop with schools in Luton. 

We also diverted most of our additional income to meet the increased personal needs of our Alumni at this difficult time - providing additional therapeutic services, and access to internet and technology for those without. While we came into Covid in a strong financial position, the loss of income combined with increased expenditure has meant that we’ve been relying on our reserves to stay afloat. 


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## **ADVOCATE CASE STUDY: KAISHA-WADE** 

I’ve always had an interest in activism and social justice, particularly issues to do with race and identity, but I wanted to do more than just be a smart arse and know about these things on an academic level - I wanted to do something in the world. I heard about Advocacy through a friend who said they thought I’d be perfect for it, because I’ve always been the stereotypical ‘outspoken/opinionated black girl’. I thought you know what, let me capitalise on this, so I applied. 

Less than a week later, Liz came to my school. She did a presentation about Advocacy and it made me so happy that I’d applied because I thought, this is a bit of me. I spoke to Liz after she did the assembly to sweeten her up a bit. 

At the interview we had to sit round a table and tell our stories, how we got to the places we’re at now. Everyone had some mad sad story and I thought I’m definitely not going to get in now because I don’t have any trauma, I’m very privileged. I said my story about my family and my mum, who wanted me to have a better life so she sent me to a private school that she couldn’t afford - even to this day she says she doesn’t know how she paid the fees. 

I was really lucky, but it was a PWI [a predominantly white institution] where I was always ‘that black girl’ who spoke too much and I kind of internalised that. **And then I found out there’s this whole rhetoric around the angry black girl** and I was like mate, is that me? Am I her? I’m not really sure. 


I was really happy when I got onto the Fellowship, but then as the summer progressed Liz was sending us emails about how the nature of the Fellowship would have to change because of Covid and I had a breakdown! I thought, I don’t want to be online, this is going to be absolutely rubbish and I’m going to miss “Eat out to help out” because I can’t go out during the day, and that really got me down. So when I found out that our first day of the Fellowship would be face to face, I was just really looking forward to that. 

I walked into Peckham Levels that day and it was a nice energy but it also felt very intimidating because I didn’t know anyone. I thought, I just want to turn round and go home, this is so nerve-racking! But everyone seemed really friendly: there was no one that was giving bad energy and all the Changemakers were there, everyone was coming to speak to me. **The day as a whole was one of the best days of my life** : by the end I thought, I am so excited for this. They gave us boxes with stuff to take home and I love presents so that was great! 

I went into the online Fellowship with low expectations. I thought it was going to be boring and lecture-style, 22 of us on a call for 9 hours every day apart from weekends. It just didn’t sound very appealing to me. But they really pulled it out of the bag! I left each day with a headache from taking in so much information and having so much to engage with. 

There were days, like Race Day, that I was not sure would be for me because I didn’t know what angle they were going to take. I didn’t know if they were going to reiterate stuff I knew or annihilate everything I thought I knew - and it was very much the latter. I was already pretty well-read and that’s due to my own personal drive, but Race Day made me feel like I was born yesterday. It was good because I wanted to feel unsettled so I could learn more - and that’s very much what I got from that experience. 

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**It’s honestly one of the craziest things that we managed to bond as a cohort even though I had only met the others in person once.** We just seemed to gel really well and unexpectedly. We also saw people’s identities evolving through the Fellowship: for example, some people weren’t familiar with pronouns when they arrived, but then they were she/her one day and then they/them, and then they were she/they. 


This was honestly one of the most incredible things I’ve ever seen, someone changing as a result of the information and environment and feeling comfortable enough to put it all out on the line. I wouldn’t say that I’m guarded, but normally I’m not going to tell you my whole business even within weeks of meeting you. A few days into the Fellowship I was ready to share my business with everyone. They created a brave space and I don’t know how they managed to create that so strongly via a Zoom call. That’s the magic of Advocacy I guess! 

My campaign, Halo, was about hair discrimination. It was driven by lived experience and the fact that it’s an issue that’s not spoken about enough. All of us have experienced it in some way but the fact there was nothing already established to tackle it seemed crazy to us. 

When you’re black, you’re told by your family, if you’re going to interviews, jobs, weddings - you need to do your hair. **There’s this unspoken notion around how natural black hair is not suitable for professional environments.** It’s one of those things 

that I internalised, you just know that’s how it is. But then I started to do more reading and became more aware of the influence of white supremacy within blackness, and I was like, hold on, this is not right. 

No one at school had explicitly told me my hair wasn’t suitable, but my friend had a puff one day and a male teacher told her she could never be a teacher with her hair like that. I was sitting next to her and I thought, what does he mean by that? You would never tell Maggie that because her hair was in a ponytail. It was one of those micro aggressions that you don’t deep was actually racist until you do the interrogation behind it. 

**I saw a lot of my friends facing prejudice because of their hair.** Both my parents and my aunties and uncles told me they’d had the same problems at school and it made me realise that if we all had this experience and we know there’s this negative connotation around our hair, then why don’t we do something about it? 

When it came to deciding on our campaign action, at first we couldn’t think of anything to do. Amelia led a session about the actions that were previously done by Advocacy and it felt very punitive - if you walked past as a member of the public you would feel bad. Halo wasn’t that type of campaign, it recognised that there were omissions in the law that we need to address but Halo is meant to be celebratory. It’s about uplifting black people, taking pride in our blackness. 

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Liz gave us the idea of doing an actual celebration and we thought yeah, let’s have a party! We had to do all our stuff in the midst of Covid, so we wanted a real-life celebration but we didn’t know what we could legally do. We had the idea of getting the first school that signed up to the Halo Code to host our action, but getting that first one was stressful because schools are so slow! A few days before the action I met the headteacher of Sutton High - I had a meeting with her to introduce Halo and at the end of the meeting I asked, do you mind if we have a party at your school? When she said yes I wanted to cry! 

The party was a really heartwarming experience. It was a workshop - we set up different stations around the room and gave walk-around tours to each of the year groups about the history of hair discrimination. Then we had two dolls with Afro-textured hair and we offered sweets to who could do the best braids. 

We also put up two boards where the idea was that you could write negative things you’ve heard about Afro-textured hair on one and positive things you’ve heard on the other, but everyone just wrote loads of positive things! It became two boards of just positives. Honestly, it nearly made me cry when a Year 5 girl came up to me to ask how to spell ‘beautiful’. We even had some parents come to the event, people were dancing and singing along to the music. I’d love to do something else like that again. 

We got so many Instagram followers after, we felt like overnight sensations! Then we were on ITV News and that was something else as well - it felt like this one action really propelled Halo, and we had girls DM-ing us saying how much they appreciated it. It was a bit stressful but the end result was really worth it. 

Even though we had a really good time I do feel like we got a watered down version of Advocacy. They were still the best times of my life but it was a shame to miss out on some things. But then, we also didn’t really know what we were missing out on. The process of making the short films for our online Graduation was really nice: it felt cathartic in a way because it was the beginning of Halo but it was the end of our Fellowship experience. 

Advocacy has shaped me in so many ways. **I genuinely feel it’s changed me as a person.** It’s given me tools to actually change things and now I feel a lot more confident that if there was something in the world that I wasn’t happy with, I would know how to bring about change in a way that is actually productive. 

Also, something that I gained that I didn’t really expect was this sense of community. I don’t know all the Alums but I know most people’s faces and I feel like I have a nice family behind me - even though I haven’t met most people in real life, but that’s another crazy thing! Building that family has been really important for me. 


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## **LAUNCHING SPARK** 

Each year, we receive 4-5 times more applications to the Fellowship than we offer places. We want to continue engaging more young people into youth activism, but we also know that the Fellowship is not suitable for every young person who could benefit from our work. So this year we started piloting Spark, a new kind of delivery for The Advocacy Academy and an important step in the growth of our movement. 

**Spark aims to reach more young people, at different stages in their social justice journeys.** Unlike the Fellowship, which demands an intensive six-month commitment from young people, Sparks are designed to have the greatest possible impact over just 5-6 days. For young people with other demands on their time such as caring responsibilities, these short interventions make our training accessible and provide an alternative entry point into our community. 

Spark uses the same interactive and experiential approach that we’ve tried and honed and in the Fellowship, but is delivered to much smaller cohorts. Up to eight ‘Sparkees’ are encouraged to join in group conversations and quickly build connections with each other. 

A key aim of stepping outside the Fellowship structure is to find new ways to accommodate different personal journeys, and as we proceed with the pilot we continue to develop our approach to this. Both of the Sparks we have run so far have taken a theme of ‘gender & patriarchy’, with the sessions split equally between social justice learning and understanding how change is made. 

Spark will ultimately be residential, like the Fellowship, but due to the pandemic this has not been possible yet. Instead, the first Spark was held on Zoom in January 2021, while the second in July took place as a series of day events at the Omnibus Theatre in Clapham. We approached young people who’d previously applied for the Fellowship to be our first Sparkees. You can read about three of their experiences below. 

## **VANESSA (Sparkee, January 2021)** 

To be honest I think the person I was when I first applied to Advocacy and the person I am now are completely different! I used to think that big problems such as sexism and racism were based on the individual and it wasn’t a problem on a systemic scale, and I applied with the same mindset. I think the reading I did after that helped me to understand the programme and have the full experience. 

I didn’t really know what to expect. Our Spark was online because of Covid and I thought it was going to be quite lecture-like, but in comparison with some of my live lessons for school, we were far more active. Spark allowed me to understand how I could bring my reading into the real world and actually use it in my activism. One of the things I found most challenging to accept was the idea that protests are useless unless they have an actual demand and a target. That completely revolutionised my way of thinking! These past few years I’ve been to so many protests about different things, such as climate change and Black Lives Matter, and I always thought they were a good way of manifesting activism. Now I realise in what ways we could improve them to bring about change. It blew my mind to even think about it! 

I want to do a campaign about colonialism because I’m from Mauritius, which is a really small island next to the Chagos Islands. The British and American forces decided to establish a military base there and literally kicked off the entire population to Mauritius. It’s awful because there are all these people who will never see their homeland again. A year ago the UN asked the UK to leave the Chagos Islands but the UK refused. I care about this because it’s part of my homeland and my heritage. That’s why I want to concentrate on the British colonialism that still takes place. 

We had another mini-session for Sparkees at the end of May on race and capitalism. During the London mayoral elections, JP from the Housing Campaign was in a mayoral assembly debate with the candidates and Imane invited us to watch it together. I definitely want to keep working with Advocacy, I think their campaigning and activism are great and probably the best in South London. 

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## **FATIAH (Sparkee, January 2021)** 

I really loved Spark! I wish we could have done it in person, we all vibed so well online that the energy would have been on ten if we were in in the room. I really liked how inclusive the Changemakers were. They listened to us and treated us like adults, and they challenged us to think outside our boxes. It was a very good environment for people to share opinions without fear of being judged, even when their opinions were different to everyone else’s. 

My secondary school was predominantly black so being opinionated wasn’t a problem there, but in sixth form the habitus was very different: even now I lower the tone of my voice so as to not make it look like I’m shouting, because they told me that I’m aggressive. I’d started sitting at the back of the class by myself, but after the first week of Spark my friends said they could see me being more involved. It was really good for my confidence, for getting me back into that space where I feel able to put my hand up and speak. 

We were split into groups and mine was given the theme of sexuality and sexual identity, which I learned are a bit different. There are other communities I can identify with, like being the daughter of an immigrant; racism; ageism to some extent - those would have been easier categories to be thrown into, but I liked how much it challenged me to consider the way I thought about discrimination and put me in another person’s shoes. 

I wish we’d had more time to go into each subject. It wasn’t that the day was rushed, but we were having such a great conversation then we had to move on to the next thing. I felt like each session created a new layer of thought and understanding. It really did spark a lot of interest in me about subjects that I didn’t think I was that interested in and conversations that I wouldn’t normally have in my everyday life. 

For people who didn’t get on the long programme but are still interested in advocacy and activism, I think Spark is a really good place to get a head start in their own learning. I’d love to keep in touch with Advocacy and join their campaigns as well, either on Zoom from uni or by coming down to London. 

## **TIA (Sparkee, July 2021)** 

Our Spark was at Clapham Omnibus Theatre. It wasn’t residential because of Covid: we started each day at 10am and finished at 9pm. Because a lot of us lived far away, Advocacy got us Ubers home each night. 

At the beginning it was so awkward! We all just sat in silence while the Changemakers were setting up, but eventually we started talking, and by the end we were all friends. It was a really trusting environment, it felt like we were all on the same level. I was really nervous that there would be people who wouldn’t have open mindsets because we were talking about very deep and real issues, but I was quickly reassured that this wasn’t the case. 

I was surprised to learn how young some of the Changemakers were! It was inspiring to actually learn from people who’d been on or led campaigns. I feel like when you hear the word ‘campaign’ it’s kind of daunting. I’d signed up to Spark because I wanted to be able to deliver a campaign and I definitely felt I got that out of it. The most challenging exercise we did was prepping one, but they talked us through the process and broke it down in a way that made it feel achievable. 

The programme was split over two weekends, which was good because you could go away and apply the learning from the first weekend then come back and discuss it at the second. One topic I found really useful was how to navigate a conversation with someone who doesn’t hold the same views as you. It’s allowed me to reflect rather than automatically getting upset, and approach it as a conversation rather than an attack. I hope I can maintain that knowledge and calm resolve because it’s easier said than done! 

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## **AN UPDATE FROM OUR ALUMNI COMMUNITY** 

Our Alums have stepped up amazingly this year to continue campaigning for critical real-world change. We’ve seen existing campaigns go from strength to strength, new campaigns being launched, and new connections being built across our community. Some of the highlights from our Alums this year include: 

- **The HALO Collective** was launched to work alongside the HALO Fellowship campaign (‘The Coders’), amplifying the voices of the Coders and extending the reach of their campaign. This is the first time the Academy has tested a parallel Advocate-Alum model of campaigning, with the groups merging following Graduation. 

- **Valentina and Eli from LatinXcluded** have been developing a play with Paines Plough called My Uncle Is Not Pablo Escobar, about the lives of Latinx women growing up in London. A work in progress performance was presented in Brixton in August, with free tickets available for Latinx audience members. 

- **The Housing Collective** has secured funding from the GLA to proceed with their project of building a development of genuinely affordable new homes for families as Lambeth’s first Community Land Trust. They are now working on the planning application with a view to submitting it next year. 

## **THE FIRST ALUMNI AGM** 

In December 2020 we held the first AGM for our Alumni, to share the latest on our campaigns and discuss our plans for the future. With many of our Alums either away at university or forced to stay at home due to the pandemic, we decided to run the AGM as a live-streamed event from Toynbee Studios, with limited in-person attendance. 

The 39 Alums who joined saw video updates from eight Alum campaigns, a discussion with Costa and Thalia about their experiences as Alum Trustees, an advertisement by current YCMs for the Younger Changemaker Apprenticeship, and presentations from the staff about how we can support new and ongoing Alum campaigns. 

The AGM ended on a beautiful note, with a song by Cecilia (Class of 2019) that she had written in lockdown called This Is For You. Afterwards, we left the Zoom session open to our young people, many of whom stayed to continue the conversation and spend time reconnecting. 

## **THE LISTENING CAMPAIGN** 

We have always worked to make sure that our young people are the leaders of our movement. This year we undertook our first full-scale Listening Campaign to learn directly from them. 

**During 2021, we interviewed each of our 122 Alumni through a series of one-to-one conversations.** We listened to their thoughts, needs and dreams for our justice community, and sought their perspective on how to make Advocacy’s Alum community a place for them to thrive. Our questions included: What events would you like us to organise? How should we support your activism? What work or socialising opportunities would enhance your connections with with the larger family? What are we getting right, and what could we do better? 

These were difficult conversations, but ones that are crucial to ensuring that our movement is truly owned by our young people. Some of the learnings that we gained and are using to build our plans for the future include: 

- ✴ **90% of our Alums are eager to take action and leadership** of campaigns close to their heart. However, the barriers they face have grown higher during the pandemic. For example, most of our lead organisers have been forced to decrease their organising activity to work two or even three jobs, on top of university or school, in order to help keep their families afloat. 

- ✴ **Alumni want more ways to lead that isn’t in front of a camera.** Due to limited resources in the past, a sense that the most “popular” campaigns are promoted as the “best” has been allowed to fester. We 

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need to do more to actively celebrate the young activists who are not in the media spotlight as much as the ones who are. 

- ✴ **The transition from Advocate to Alumnus can be especially hard** for those whose campaigns were born out of individual trauma and oppressions. It is crucial that we prioritise healing space for trauma: the liberation psychology is a great first step but we can do more in terms of creating informal healing spaces. 

- ✴ **Alumni should be encouraged to set boundaries** for themselves and say ‘no’ to being involved in campaigning and activism if they don’t have the capacity. The “do more to be more” attitude can be toxic in activist circles, and we should hold conversations with Alumni around challenging it. 

- ✴ **It can feel hard to leave a campaign** that has almost been like a family, but it’s healthy to have endings or take breaks. We should support Alumni to close chapters when they are ready to step away from their campaigns or The Advocacy Academy. 

- ✴ **Many Alums challenged the fairness of the Younger Changemaker remuneration system** we previously had in place. This used a sliding scale based on years of experience, with the result that YCMs were being paid different wages to do the same work. Enabled by the increasing strength of our finances, we are now moving to a system in which everybody is paid the London Living Wage. 


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“My Uncle Is Not Pablo Escobar” work in progress 



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## **LEADING AS A YOUNGER CHANGEMAKER: CECILIA** 

My own Fellowship experience was amazing and intense. In my application, my ‘what makes you angry’ answer should have been a lot more connected to my identity, but at the time I didn’t really know what that was. I wrote about the refugee crisis, how David Cameron had agreed to only accept 20,000 refugees over five years, while Germany was going to let a million in. That’s obviously a really important topic but it wasn’t connected to anything that I or my family had experienced. **Looking back, I didn’t realise how many other things were making me angry.** 

At Advocacy I really learned about my own identity for the first time and that what I’d experienced was wrong. I think it's crazy that without Advocacy I’d still be going through life facing oppressions but not knowing how to respond to them. Latin Americans are just not visible in our society, which is what my campaign, LatinXcluded, was about. Eli was a Younger Changemaker (YCM) on our cohort, and having her there brought up a lot for me - she’s also Latin American and I hadn’t heard someone else talk about something I related to so much. I found all the YCMs so friendly and welcoming, they made a really nice environment for us and it made me think, I want to do that! I really enjoy working with people and I thought it would be so cool to watch others go on the same journey as I did and help them with that. I did my first YCM training the summer after I graduated from the Fellowship. 

I’ve been a YCM three times. The first time I was really nervous: I had quite a bit of excitement because I’d been looking forward to doing it but I felt suddenly out of my depth and that I was going to get things wrong. There was a moment when Darcey jumped in on a section I was delivering because I froze. Afterwards, she gave me some feedback and the next time I thought, ok, I’ve had this experience before, I know where I struggled and what I could do differently. I used to be a person who wouldn't ask questions because I didn’t think I was going to say them right, but now I’ve realised it's ok to ask if I don’t know what’s going on. It’s the same in facilitation -  if someone says something and you don’t know what they mean it’s alright to ask. I feel more confident now in my knowledge, even if I sometimes struggle to get it out! 

My proudest moment as a YCM came from my most recent residential. We had a young person in my home team who had said something homophobic and we needed to address it. I feel like we created a really comfortable space in the home team, and as the Fellowship went on they seemed to come out of their shell a bit. Towards the end they actually said ‘I think I’m starting to question my own sexuality more’ and it was a really beautiful moment because finally they felt comfortable enough in the space to say it and have a conversation about it. They were reflecting on how what they said was wrong but also about what they’d been holding in. It made me feel really warm because **it had such a big impact on this person and we’d created a space for them to be able to explore that.** 

The past two trainings I’ve done were online, which was good in a sense because I didn’t have to miss so much of uni, but I’m quite an inperson person - I find it hard to concentrate online and I need to move around quite a lot as well. The Uber Eats money was really important, the food stipend got us through the day! 

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I’ve seen some changes in the YCM trainings over the years. For example, now there’s more around feedback. **As a YCM, you’re in a good position to give feedback because you see Advocacy from different angles** : you go through the Fellowship as Advocates and then as Changemakers, so you have a better understanding of how the organisation works and how it could work better. 

Payment for YCMs is something I’d like to see change. I don’t think there should be a tiered system of payment, if we’re all doing the same job we should get paid the same amount. I understand that some people have more experience but it doesn’t seem fair. Another thing is the relationship between Older Changemakers (OCMs) and YCMs. Before, there definitely was a distinction between the roles, even though they said there wasn’t. I felt like I didn’t want to let an OCM down, and that I wasn’t at their level. But the last time I did changemaking, even the OCMs Imane and Fopé were questioning it. I didn’t feel it as much that time. 

The other day I did a performance reading of a play that Eli and Valentina are writing called My Uncle is not Pablo Escobar. They said they could really see my YCM side coming through when I was interacting with the audience. I think **being a YCM has given me experience in how to talk to groups of people and holding a space** , which really comes into acting. So it was quite cool to recognise that and think yeah actually, that’s true! 

I definitely want to pursue something in the creative world and incorporate my activism into that because that’s who I am. Those two worlds collide quite a lot. We did the Fuck You, Pay Me play at the last Alumni Residential - theatre is so good at getting things across and you see that in television as well. I wrote a song for my graduation, and another one that I performed at the Advocacy AGM. I’d love to run a poetry writing or song writing session in Advocacy at some point: we have so many amazing poets, singers and artists, we’ve got to use them! 

I do want to stay involved in Advocacy but I don’t know in what capacity yet. I’m going into my third year at uni so I might take a step back just because this is a big study year. I would like to be a YCM again because I really enjoy it and I like working with younger people, but I don’t know when that will be. 


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## **FINANCE REVIEW** 

The Advocacy Academy’s income has decreased this financial year, from £823k to £739k, while our expenditures increased from £464k, to £507k. In the previous financial year (FY2020), The Advocacy Academy received a one-off grant of £300,000 from Stewarts Investors. This, combined with the unprecedented circumstances around Covid makes comparisons year to year complicated. 

Thanks to the support of our funders, we were able to fully finance our core costs and delivery of the Fellowship. We had planned to focus our time on exploring new strategic areas, including the ongoing exploration of the training programme - JustEducation - and our new Campus for Young Activists. However, due to Covid-19 many of our operations were postponed or cancelled with funds being used to cover non-refundable bookings and fulfil contractor commitments. 

The management team and trustees worked together to place an emphasis on restricting outgoings and in particular the indirect costs of charitable work, including governance and administration costs, which represented less than 5% of total expenditure during the year. 

A surplus of £232,491 was generated for the year (2020: £359,900) and at 31 March 2021, the total reserves of the charity were £696,956 (2020: £464,465), of which £386,839 were general unrestricted and £240,000 were designated unrestricted. 

In line with targets set by the management team of The Advocacy Academy and the Board of Trustees, The Advocacy Academy has been working towards building reserves equivalent to at least three months of basic operating costs, successfully surpassing that target this year. 

## **FUNDRAISING** 

This year we secured £739,328 in income, of which £498,665 (67%) came from trusts and foundations, £153,227 (21%) from individual donations, £30,386 (4%) from Government grants, and £57,050 (8%) from charitable activities. 

Our target income for this year was £618,000. We exceeded this target., and have begun to diversify our income, with a small increase in income from individual donations from £147,148 to £153,227. 

This year also saw us continue to explore a number of paid services through the JustEducation programme and delivery of power & privilege workshops, though these were impacted by Covid. 

## **RESERVES OVERVIEW** 

Our reserves position ending FY20 is £464,465 of which £91,628 is restricted and £372,838 is unrestricted, and £300,000 is designated unrestricted reserves. 

Our reserves position ending FY21 is £696,956 of which £70,117 is restricted and £626,839 is unrestricted, and £240,000 is designated unrestricted reserves. 

The designated unrestricted reserves reflects the grant from Stewarts Investors we received last year. These funds are designated for non-core activities over the next five years, starting FY21. 

For FY21, the reserves policy of The Advocacy Academy was to meet approximately three months’ running costs (approx. £180K) which The Advocacy Academy has now exceeded considerably. Our target reserves for FY22 are four months’ running costs (approx. £240k). We hope to maintain our current reserves balance and use the excess for further growth. 

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## **KEY RISKS AND UNCERTAINTIES** 

The Advocacy Academy has been growing at pace for a number of years. Like many charities that are scaling, TAA must take care to: 

## **1. Diversify income** 

Diversification of income has begun with an increased focus on individual donation, exploration of rental income from the Campus and the piloting of paid services 

## **2. Impact of Covid** 

The ongoing impact of Covid remains uncertain. We have seen already that the quality of the programmes we deliver is diminished when we are forced to use online options exclusively 

## **3. Build infrastructure to support growth** 

As staff numbers increase and the size of our movement also grows, critical functions such as finance, HR, IT, office management, etc., are needed to ensure that growth is sustainable. 


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## PART THREE: LOOKING 

## AHEAD 

**In many ways, our journey has been like a seven-year sprint. Since 2014, we’ve proven that youth organising can lead to lasting real-world change; we’ve trained more than a hundred power-hungry young activists; and we’ve built a community of thousands of partners, volunteers and supporters who share our vision for a more fair, just and equal society. The fallow year is our time to turn inwards and transform our movement, to ensure that we continue to grow purposefully over the next seven years.** 

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## **THE FALLOW YEAR** 

**We want to become a centre of excellence for youth organising in the UK** : a thought leader, innovator, and training-house for passionate individuals and organisations across the country who share our mission. We are also committed to investing in our community of Alumni, and refreshing the Fellowship ready for the next class of Advocates in August 2022. 

With the Listening Campaign as our jumping-off point, **we are creating space in the fallow year to come together** across our Alumni, staff and partners, to share ideas and move forward with intention. We want our values and our principles to be truly interwoven through all aspects of our programming, strategic direction, and relational practice. This work will be slow by nature; it’s also necessary to ensure the strength and sustainability of our movement. 

## **A NEW CEO** 

After seven years at the helm of our movement, our Founder and CEO Amelia Viney is stepping down from The Advocacy Academy in 2021. The Advocacy Academy exists because of Amelia’s vision and drive, and none of us would be here today without her. In the seven years since our inception, we have grown in unimaginable ways and built a truly impactful and inspiring movement. All movements need constant renewal and regeneration to achieve their mission, and so the time has come for Amelia to move on. As we move forward, we will continue to build on our vision - to grow the power of our movement, and move ever more of that power into the hands of our Alumni community. 

## Here is a farewell message from Amelia: 

## **Dear Friends,** 

**After seven years together, the time has finally come for me to say goodbye. It has been an incredible privilege to build this movement and I am so grateful to have shared this adventure with such generous, dedicated, and visionary staff, supporters, and partners. I leave with a strong sense of pride at what we have dreamed into existence, and for the very special place The Advocacy Academy holds in the hearts and journeys of so many.** 

**As I step back and marvel at everything that our Advocates have created, I see a powerful community with deep roots. There are so many remarkable memories and milestones - too many to list. There could be no better time to reach this moment of transition than as we welcome the first of our graduates as full-time members of staff.** 

**While the departure of any founder presents challenges, the process also offers an opportunity to renew TAA in a way that ensures it will not just survive, but come ever-closer to achieving its mission. With friends like you, I know that TAA’s most formidable days are ahead of it.** 

**Any sadness I feel in leaving the movement I love is far outweighed by my gratitude for the past seven years as part of the very best community I know.** 

## **Keep on bending the arc,** 

## **Amelia** 

Stepping up into the CEO role, Saba Shafi will leave her current role as Managing Director. Already well known to Advocacy and our partners, Saba needs no introduction but offers her welcome to the next stage of our movement: 

**"Late into 2017 in my first week at The Advocacy Academy, I joined the Class of 2018 at a Friday Evening Gathering in a small community centre in Stockwell. I remember feeling incredibly excited, deeply awkward (it was my first week after all) and moved by the sense of hope I felt. A month later I'd be working with Legally Black to capture the ad hack of Brixton bus-stops, peeling blu-tack off the walls with Advocates, and finding** 

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**myself knee deep in research on the future of youth organising. I knew very quickly that I had found my habitat.** 

**“For lots of us Advocacy has been a home, a place to find hope, to make sense of it all, and to take action on the most pressing issues of our time. I was TAA’s first full-time employee, brought in by our founder to grow us from a single flagship programme into an institution and a centre for excellence for youth organising in the UK. We have come a long way since then, growing into a community of 122 Alumni, over 400 campaigners, educators, and partner institutions, and thousands of supporters beyond.** 

**“Our Movement is now entering its eighth year, and we are only beginning to scratch the surface of our potential. With so much ahead of us, I am beyond humbled to be taking the helm of The Advocacy Academy. The last few months have been a flurry of excited conversations over Zoom (and even some in person!), debating with Alumni where we go next, welcoming new members of our team, figuring out how we scale with integrity, and chatting to our partners on where we sit within the broader tradition of justice in the UK. We’re still thinking some things through, but I am very excited for what we have in store.”** 

## **OUR PLANS FOR THE NEXT YEAR** 

We refer to the upcoming period as a ‘fallow year’, but inside the chrysalis we’re very much hard at work. We’re excited to share our development and learnings as we continue on this journey. Here’s a view of our plans in snapshot: 

- ✴ **Supporting campaigns beyond the Fellowship** We’ve heard from our Alums that they find it challenging to transition from regular support during the Fellowship to occasional chats with staff, so this year, we are investing in our Alumni to make sure their campaigns are truly sustainable. We’re taking time to think through the support we provide, and the relationship between our campaigns and our movement. 

- ✴ **Celebrating seven years of action at The Advocacy Academy** Our Advocates have launched an incredible 39 campaigns through the Fellowship. Responding to the Listening Campaign, this year we are exploring ways to tie up the campaigns that are finished and recognise their achievements. We want to create a written record that captures every campaign’s impact at an individual, community and wider social level, and accompany this with an Alum festival that brings us together to learn and celebrate. 

- ✴ **Hiring our first Alumni Staff** We have committed to making our movement 75% youth-led by 2025, and this year we’ve reached a stage in our growth where we can start taking major steps towards achieving this. In November 2021 we are thrilled to welcome six Alumni onto the staff team: Mel (Class of 2018), Betty and Ilhan (both Class of 2017) are our new Movement Leaders, while Vanessa (Class of 2016), Steph (Class of 2015) and Shiden (Class of 2018) become our first Community Organisers. 

- ✴ **Transforming our culture** This year, we are increasing our staff numbers from seven to 18, including introducing our first Alumni onto the team. As we grow, we want to ensure that we build an internal culture which actively seeks to avoid replicating harm and conflict, and supports a transformative journey for our organisation and our community. We are managing this process through a transformative justice framework, in a process led by Alex Johnston and molly who are researchers and practitioners in this field. 

- ✴ **Looking for a new space** Unfortunately, because of the pandemic we never got to do the building work on the Campus that we’d planned in order to increase our uses of it. With the end of our lease coming up, we are now looking for a new space to become the home of community organising in South London. Given that our staff team has doubled in size over the course of 2021, we have also needed suitable office space. In October 2021, we began renting a co-working space at Tripod in Lambeth Town Hall. 

- ✴ **Undertaking a communications review** We have gained a strong and committed supporter base in our seven years. To strengthen these connections and increase our reach, we are working with Common Knowledge to update our website, and Economic Change to move our systems onto Salesforce. In 2020, we put these plans on hold in order to divert funds towards our Covid response. We now aim to restart the process and launch our new website in summer 2022. 

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## **OUR STAFF** 

## **Amelia Viney** Founder & Chief Advocate 2014-2021 

Amelia has a background in Youth Movement leadership, and cut her teeth in politics as a Parliamentary Researcher in Westminster and a civil rights lobbyist in Washington, DC. She is hugely passionate about bringing these two worlds together to empower young leaders to improve their own lives and the lives of others. 

## **Saba Shafi** Managing Director 2017-2021, CEO 2021- 

Saba has an MBA from Wharton and eight years of management consultancy experience. She kicked off her career leading healthcare initiatives in refugee camps and diversity and inclusion programmes in graduate schools in the US. Saba is passionate about growing The Advocacy Academy. 

## **Liz Ward** Programmes Director 2019-2021 

Liz is an educator, collaborator and activist, who first found her feet in Climate Justice after graduating in Zoology. She spent the start of her career travelling the length and breadth of the country delivering workshops and speeches in schools, followed by managing a youth project in London that works with survivors of exploitation. 

## **Anneka Deva** Community Director 2019-2021 

Anneka has 10 years’ experience in strategic marketing and community development. She honed her storytelling and marketing skills at an award-winning brand agency, a tech startup accelerator, and the University of Birmingham. A native Brummie, Anneka founded and led TEDxBrum and also hosted the first Enrol Yourself ‘learning marathon’. 

## **Alex Johnston** JustEducation Director 2020-2022, Transformative Culture Advisor 2022- 

Alex coordinated the delivery of our social justice education training arm, before moving to restorative justice work with an explicit transformative and abolitionist framework. She has an MA in Social Justice and Education, and is also a student, facilitator and consultant. 

## **molly** Transformative Culture Advisor 2020-2022 

A long-time friend of TAA, molly is a student, researcher, and facilitator of transformative justice with a background in sexual violence support work. Over the last five years she has focused her energies into transformative non-carceral approaches to harm and now collaborates with Alex to bring their shared expertise to the Academy. 

## **Darcey Williamson** Head of Cyclical Leadership 2018- 

Darcey leads our Changemaker Apprenticeship programme. A youth worker and informal educator whose practice is informed by a radical youth work paradigm, she has over 10 years’ experience of tackling the many different forms of violence young people endure and co-running anti-gentrification projects. 

## **Tom Ross Williams** Creative Director 2019-2021 

Tom is an actor, theatre-maker and activist. Their passion is bringing together the arts with social justice. In their role as Creative Director they developed partnerships with arts organisations and have found innovative ways to integrate arts into the Fellowship, as both a tool for pedagogy and for change. 

**Imane Maghrani** Spark Programmes Manager 2020-2021, Associate Director Spark Programmes 2021- 

Imane is a social justice educator who loves creating spaces where young people are heard, seen and supported to thrive. Starting her career in academia, she took a path through the private and non-profit sectors to learn that she loves spending time surrounded by passionate young people (admittedly more than spending time with adults). 

## **Dhakshi Suriar** Head of Philanthropy 2021- 

Dhakshi is an accidental activist (her words), with a huge passion for social justice. After a couple of stints in the finance sector, she moved across to non-profits working predominantly in trusts and foundations. She now oversees philanthropy at The Advocacy Academy, bringing a breadth of partnership management experience with her. 

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## **Fopé Olaleye** Political Education Lead 2021- 

Fopé is an educator and writer who brings a wealth of facilitation experience from Fearless Futures. They have travelled the country delivering talks and workshops to universities and are now beyond excited to dig their teeth into Advocacy campaigns, as their work has always involved campaigning and critical thinking around education. 

## **Amarah Khan** Community Administrator 2021- 

Amarah has a Masters Degree in Environmental Psychology. Starting her career in qualitative research, she uses evidence and insight to create fairer spaces. She is passionate about creating social and physical spaces that dare to have chutzpah and be unapologetically beautiful. 

## **Lydia Rye** Campaigns & Organising Director 2021- 

Lydia is an experienced Community Organiser and campaigner with more than a decade of experience in social purpose work. She is a former Senior Organiser for Citizens UK; a host for The Dinner Party, a peer led grief support group based on food and collective care; and still works freelance with funders interested in funding organising work. 

## **Shiden Tekle** Community Organiser 2021- 

Shiden is an activist who graduated from the Fellowship in 2018 and has stayed involved with TAA as a Changemaker since. His campaigns include Legally Black and The Halo Code, winning MTV EMA awards and a Marie Claire award from both campaigns. He studied Politics and International Relations at Queen Mary, University of London. 

## **Stephanie Cohen** Community Organiser 2021- 

Having graduated from the Fellowship in 2015, Stephanie gained an LLM in Legal and Political Theory from York University. The Legal and Political Organiser of The Halo Code, she calls herself a Legal academic, having published her first article in June 2021 arguing for legally recognising hair discrimination as a form of racial discrimination. 

## **Vanessa Castro** Community Organiser 2021- 

Vanessa graduated from TAA in 2016 and then completed a BA in Politics and International Relations. As a YCM she has participated in many fun, radical campaign actions whilst empowering and supporting young Advocates. She is co-organiser of Latinxcluded, a collective that fights for the representation of the Latinx community in the UK. 

## **Betty Pearl** Movement Leader 2021- 

An Alum of the Class of 2017, Betty has organised on campaigns such as Influuenzers and Education Not Exclusion, and was heavily involved in the documentary Excluded. She was President of Feminists’ Society at Nottingham where she studied Politics and IR and is currently part of the Involving Young People Collective for Esmée Fairbairn. 

## **Mel Pinto** Movement Leader 2021- 

Mel recently completed her BA Hons in Politics and IR. She has campaigned with TAA since graduating in 2018 and was the leading liberation officer at university. She constantly leads with awareness around mental health because she went undiagnosed for a big part of her life and knows how it is to feel invisible. 

## **Ilhan Yonis** Movement Leader 2021- 

From the TAA Class of 2017, Ilhan has worked on the Housing Campaign and is also currently working as a lead organiser for The Halo Code. Ilhan has had many media appearances, including a feature on the cover of Dazed with Vivienne Westwood and her collaborative film 'Hijab and me,' which earned her a BAFTA nomination. 

## **Shoomi Chowdhury** Programmes Director 2022- 

Shoomi has extensive experience leading transformative programmes, joining us after seven years in human rights education at Amnesty UK and anti-oppression programmes in the arts and cultural sector.. She has a track record of getting things done whilst centring the lived experience of people and communities impacted by oppressive structures. 

## **Hiba Ahmad** Community Director 2022- 

A Human Geography graduate & enthusiast, Hiba is passionate about building fair cities and creating lasting, inclusive spaces that bring people together. As a researcher she has focused on just transitions across the globe and as a campaigner and organiser she works in critical pedagogy, liberation work, anti-gentrification, and climate justice. 

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## **Titilola Dawudu** Alumni Associate Director 2022-2022 

Titilola's work spans across arts and cultural, charity and youth sectors. A hyphenate creative, she is part of Black Womxn in Theatre and created The Hear Me Now Series, a collection of initiatives and movements that increase positive narratives and representation of actors, makers and creators who are Black and from the global majority. 

## **OUR TRUSTEES** 

## PATRON **Helen Hayes MP** 

Helen has been Patron of The Advocacy Academy since before she was elected as Labour MP for Dulwich and West Norwood! She is a staunch affordable housing advocate in Parliament, where she sits on the Communities and Local Government Select Committee. 

## CHAIR **Daniel Taylor MBE** 

Daniel Taylor is the Founder and CEO of MDC Group, a highly respected design agency with a reputation for designing and building bespoke interiors for public and private sector clients. Daniel is a founding trustee for the Creative & Cultural Skills Council, a Fellow of the RSA, a trustee for the Aleto Foundation and Ambassador for the Black Health Collaborative Organisation. 

## VICE-CHAIR **Marjorie Perkins** 

Marjorie is a multi award wining TMT professional, who has worked for over 20 years at BT. Marjorie is also a Program Delivery Lead at the Aleto Foundation. Previously, Marjorie was a member of the Advisory Board for Career Ready, and the Area Director for Toastmasters International. 

## INTERIM TREASURER: **Thishani Nadesan** COO | Cleo AI 

Thish’s start up Cleo AI works to radically improve our relationship with money. She is a passionate believer that business and tech can be a force for positive social and economic change, and brings the board experience in business strategy and scaling companies. 

## ALUMNI TRUSTEE **Thalia Papanicolaou** Class of 2017 

Thalia is currently studying International Studies at Leiden University. She co-organises the Climate Justice Collective of the Advocacy Academy’s Alumni network, working on the issue of intersectional youth representation. She is also involved in ‘Influuenzers’, the Alumni response to the Covid-19 crisis, creating content related to the pandemic. 

## ALUMNI TRUSTEE **Constantinos Christou** Class of 2016 

Costa co-leads Advocacy’s housing work as an organiser for the Housing Collective, which recently secured a £5.1m piece of land from TfL to build affordable housing. He has facilitated a number of sessions on the Fellowship programme. Costa is currently on a research technology graduate scheme at Kantar.. 

## **Abimbola Wingate-Saul** Barrister | 25 Bedford Row Chambers 

Alongside her professional work and trusteeship of Advocacy, Abimbola is currently Chair of the Independent Scrutiny and Oversight Board on the Police Plan of Action on Inclusion and Race. She is also a founder and co-host of The Manifesto Read Podcast which breaks down the manifesto pledges of the big three parties. 

## **Dominique Airey** Founder | Sward 

Dominique joined the Board when she was CEO of Khulisa, which works to rehabilitate offenders and support those at risk of crime, violence and victimisation. She believes strongly in collaboration between sectors to drive meaningful and sustainable social impact. 

## **Layal Marten** Growth Lead | Founders Pledge 

Layal Marten has a commercial background in sponsorship and large events in Australia, where she worked before moving into the not-for-profit sector in the UK as a professional fundraiser in 2013. She is currently also an advisor to Humanitas Technologies and handles partnerships with Sumerian Partners. 

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## **Maha Sardar** Barrister | Garden Court Chambers 

Maha is a longstanding advocate for social change. A dual qualified barrister/solicitor, she has worked in the field of human rights, immigration and asylum for over a decade, and with charities including Refugee and Migrant Justice, Reprieve, Liberty and the UNHCR in Istanbul. 

## **Michelle King** Director of Tranformation | Allvue Systems 

Having spent over 20 years in Finance, Michelle set up Silent Way Partners to promote economic opportunity based on merit, not on race, gender or class. She went on to create the Silent Way Foundation to promote equality of opportunity for marginalised communities and invest in minority women founders, before moving to Allvue Systems. 

## **Natalie Armitage** Project Manager | The Ubele Initiative 

A seasoned professional in the world of advocacy, Natalie’s work at Ubele prioritises black-led community building initiatives to build infrastructure and sustainable funding across the UK. During the Covid-19 pandemic, she also held daily free breathing classes as a trained Yoga teacher, to support people’s mental health. 

## **Rachel Diamond Hunter** Executive Director | New Economy Organisers Network (NEON) 

Rachel has worked for over a decade in campaigning and politics including at 38 Degrees, at Nelson Mandela’s organisation The Elders and working for an MP. She’s the co-founder of Jewish movement, Na’amod and is currently the Executive Director: Organisational Development at NEON. 

**Ruth Pryce** Head of Programme - Young People | Paul Hamlyn Foundation 

Ruth is part of the grant making team at the Paul Hamlyn Foundation, where she leads on and invests in organisations that support young people. Her focus is on collaboration to achieve collective impact and on applying a systems change lens to enable effective investments that deliver social change. 

## **Sam Grant** Policy and Campaigns Manager | Liberty 

Sam was a founding trustee of The Advocacy Academy. At Liberty, he works on ending immigration detention, protecting the Human Rights Act, mental health and military justice issues. He blogs for the website Rights Info and volunteers for the Refugee Cricket Project. 

## **Samir Manek** Regulation and ESG – Solicitor | Mishcon de Reya LLP 

Samir trained as a solicitor at a magic circle law firm and joined the Board as a prosecutor of the Financial Conduct Authority. He has worked with charities and social enterprises in the UK and abroad, with a focus on developing marginalised and underrepresented individuals’ human and social capital. 

## **Shivani Smith** Senior Consultant | Perrett Laver 

Shivani brings over 18 years of strategy, marketing, operational, sales, fundraising and management experience gained in SMEs and charities. She was previously Deputy Chair of the board of trustees for Khulisa, and helped set up not-for-profit organisation The Twist Partnership. 

## **Zoe Tyndall** Change Support Team | Hackney Council 

Zoe previously led OxFizz, an educational social enterprise which raised over half a million pounds for UK charities and helped more than 1000 students from all backgrounds to reach their academic potential. Her background is in investment management for charities. 

## **GOVERNANCE** 

## **Status** 

Charity registration number 1161785. The Charitable Incorporated Organisation is governed by a Constitution, which was passed, and last amended, on 1 January 2015. 

## **Charitable Objects** 

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Advance the education of the public, particularly but not exclusively people under the age of 25, in such ways as the charity trustees think fit, including but not limited to in the subject of politics. 

To develop the skills, capacities and capabilities of young people in such a way that they are better able to identify and help meet their needs and enable them to participate in society as mature and responsible adults. 

The Trustees have had regard to guidance issued by the charity commission on public benefit. 

## **Key Activities** 

We train young people to engage in collective action to improve their communities and tackle social issues which directly affect them. 

## **Public Benefits Disclosure** 

The Trustees have given due consideration to the Charity Commission’s published guidance on the Public Benefit Requirement under the Charities Act 2011. 

## **Founded** 

20 February 2014: The United Nations World Day of Social Justice 

## **Registered** 

21 May 2015 

## **Trustees** 

Abimbola Wingate-Saul (Jan 2021 to present) Constantinos Christou (May 2020 to present) Daniel Taylor MBE, CHAIR (Jul 2022 to present) Dominique Airey (Sep 2016 to May 2020) Layal Marten (Apr 2018 to Jun 2022) Maha Sardar (Jan 2021 to present) Marjorie Perkins, VICE-CHAIR (Jul 2022 to present) Michelle King (May 2020 to present) Natalie Armitage (May 2020 to present) Rachel Diamond Hunter (May 2020 to Jul 2022) Ruth Pryce, CO-CHAIR (Feb 2021 to Nov 2022) Thalia Papanicolaou (May 2020 to present) Thish Nadesan (Dec 2018 to present) Sam Grant, INTERIM CHAIR (Jun 2019 to Feb 2021), TRUSTEE (May 2015 - Jul 2021) Samir Manek (Oct 2018 to July 2020) Shivani Smith, CO-CHAIR (Feb 2021 to Nov 2022), INTERIM CHAIR (Oct 2020 to Jan 2021), TRUSTEE (Apr 2018 to present) Zoe Tyndall (Jan 2017 to Feb 2022) 

The Trustees have ultimate responsibility for The Advocacy Academy, work to ensure good governance, sign off on the overall strategic direction and are the highest decision making body. The Board works with the executive team (see staff bios in the previous section) which is responsible for the day-to-day running of the charity. Trustees maintain a good working knowledge of charity law and best practice. 

The Board has the power to appoint Trustees as it considers appropriate, with particular reference to enriching skills and increasing representation from communities reflected in our Alumni community. There are informal procedures in place for their induction. New Trustees are provided with one year’s worth of Board minutes, financial reports, and the Memorandum and articles of Association. 

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## **Pay & Remuneration** 

All pay and remuneration is made in line with a pay table which details by level the range of salary an individual can earn, as part of a broader pay and performance policy. 

Salaries of the CEO are agreed by the Trustees. Staff salaries are agreed by line managers in partnership with the Commercial Director and the CEO to meet pay and performance policy and budget needs. 

## **CEO** 

Amelia Viney (Feb 2014 - Jul 2021) Saba Shafi (Aug 2021 - present) 

Amelia resigned on 7th July 2021 and Saba became CEO on 9th August 2021 

## **Patron** 

Helen Hayes, MP Dulwich and West Norwood 

## **Registered Office** 

7 Vining Street, London, SW9 8QA 

## **Bank** 

HSBC, 421 Brixton Rd, London SW9 8HE 

## **Independent Examiner** 

David Renton CA, 16 Sheridan Walk, London NW11 7UF 

## **Pro Bono Solicitors** 

Allen & Overy, One Bishops Square, London E1 6AD 

## **Socials** 

- Website www.TheAdvocacyAcademy.com 

- Email hello@TheAdvocacyAcademy.com 

- Twitter: @AdvocacyAcademy 

- Instagram: @AdvocacyAcademy 

- YouTube: yt.vu/+advocacyacademyRISK 

## **Energy and Carbon Reporting** 

We used less than 40,000kWh this reporting period. 

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The Trustees have read and reviewed the Strategic Report 

Name: Daniel Taylor, Chair of Trustees Signature: 


Name: Marjorie Perkins, Vice-Chair of Trustees Signature: 


Name: Thishani Nadesan, Treasurer Signature: 


47 



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DocuSign Envelope ID: D1F210C1-6BCF-4B39-9A71-B626604A381E 

## **Report to the trustees of The Advocacy Academy (Charity No. 1161785), on accounts for the year ended 31 March 2021 (set out on pages 50-61)** 

Responsibilities and basis of report 

I report to the trustees on my examination of the accounts of the above charity for the year ended 31 March 2021 

As the charity's trustees, you are responsible for the preparation of the accounts in accordance with the requirements of the Charities Act 2011 (“the Act”). 

I report in respect of my examination of  the Trust’s accounts carried out under section 145 of the 2011 Act and in carrying out my examination, I have followed all the applicable Directions given by the Charity Commission under section 145(5)(b) of the Act. 

Independent examiner's statement 

The charity’s gross income exceeded £250,000 and I am qualified to undertake the examination by being a qualified member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland. 

I have completed my examination.  I confirm that no material matters have come to my attention in connection with the examination which gives me cause to believe that in, any material respect: 

- the accounting records were not kept in accordance with section 130 of the Charities Act; or 

- the accounts did not accord with the accounting records; or 

- the accounts did not comply with the applicable requirements concerning the form and content of accounts set out in the Charities (Accounts and Reports) Regulations 2008 other than any requirement that the accounts give a ‘true and fair’ view which is not a matter considered as part of an independent examination. 

I have no concerns and have come across no other matters in connection with the examination to which attention should be drawn in this report in order to enable a proper understanding of the accounts to be reached. 


## David Renton CA 

16 Sheridan Walk, London NW11 7UF 

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## **The Advocacy Academy** 

**Statement of financial activities** (incorporating an income and expenditure account) 

**For the year ended 31 March 2021** 

||||||**2021**||||2020|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|||**Unrestricted**|**Unrestricted**|||Unrestricted|Unrestricted|||
|||**General**|**Designated**|**Restricted**|**Total**|General|Designated|Restricted|Total|
||Note|**£**|**£**|**£**|**£**|£|£|£|£|
|**Income from:**||||||||||
|Grants, donations and legacies|2|**439,265**|**-**|**243,013**|**682,278**|104,648|300,000|338,650|743,298|
|Charitable activities|3|||||||||
|Alumni and campaigns||**-**|**-**|**36,000**|**36,000**|3,223|-|-|3,223|
|Commissioning (spark programme)||**-**|**-**|**12,000**|**12,000**|-|-|16,500|16,500|
|Just Education||**-**|**-**|**-**|**-**|-|-|55,030|55,030|
|Workshops||**1,550**|**-**|**-**|**1,550**|5,379|-|-|5,379|
|Other income||**-**|**-**|**7,500**|**7,500**|-|-|-|-|
|**Total income**||**440,815**|**-**|**298,513**|**739,328**|113,250|300,000|410,180|823,430|
|**Expenditure on:**||||||||||
|Raising funds|4|**50,285**|**-**|**-**|**50,285**|46,975|-|-|46,975|
|Charitable activities|4|**76,528**|**60,000**|**320,024**|**456,552**|77,657|-|338,898|416,555|
|**Total expenditure**|4|**126,813**|**60,000**|**320,024**|**506,837**|124,632|-|338,898|463,530|
|**Net income / (expenditure) for the year**||**314,002**|**(60,000)**|**(21,511)**|**232,491**|(11,382)|300,000|71,282|359,900|
|Transfers between funds||**-**|**-**|**-**|**-**|-|-|-|-|
|**Net movement in funds**||**314,002**|**(60,000)**|**(21,511)**|**232,491**|(11,382)|300,000|71,282|359,900|
|**Reconciliation of funds:**||||||||||
|Total funds brought forward||**72,837**|**300,000**|**91,628**|**464,465**|84,219|-|20,346|104,565|
|**Total funds carried forward**|13|**386,839**|**240,000**|**70,117**|**696,956**|72,837|300,000|91,628|464,465|



All of the above results are derived from continuing activities. There were no other recognised gains or losses other than those stated above. Movements in funds are disclosed in Note 13 to the financial statements. 

The notes on pages 53 to 61 form part of these financial statements 

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## **The Advocacy Academy** 

## **Balance sheet** 

## **As at 31 March 2021** 

|Note<br>**Fixed assets:**<br>9<br>**Current assets:**<br>10<br>**Liabilities:**<br>11<br>12<br>13<br>Total unrestricted funds<br>Debtors<br>Restricted income funds<br>Unrestricted income funds:<br>Designated funds<br>**The funds of the charity:**<br>Creditors: amounts falling due within one year<br>**Net current assets / (liabilities)**<br>**Total net assets / (liabilities)**<br>Cash at bank and in hand<br>Tangible assets<br>General funds<br>**Total charity funds**|**£**<br>**187,010**<br>**498,005**|**2021**<br>**£**<br>**35,322**|£<br>40,582<br>400,674|2020<br>£<br>44,412|
|---|---|---|---|---|
|||**35,322**<br>**661,634**||44,412<br>420,053|
||**685,015**<br>**23,381**||441,256<br>21,203||
||**240,000**<br>**386,839**||300,000<br>72,837||
|||**696,956**||464,465|
|||**70,117**<br>**626,839**||91,628<br>372,837|
||||||
|||**696,956**||464,465|



Approved by the trustees on                      and signed on their behalf by9/12/2022 


…………………………….. - Trustee 

Thishani Nadesan 

The notes on pages 53 to 61 form part of these financial statements 

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## **The Advocacy Academy** 

## **Statement of cash flows** 

|**For the year ended 31 March 2021**|||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
|Note<br>**Net income / (expenditure) for the reporting period**<br>Depreciation charges<br>Dividends, interest and rent from investments<br>(Increase)/decrease in debtors<br>Increase/(decrease) in creditors<br>**Net cash from/(used in) operating activities**<br>**Analysis of cash and cash equivalents**<br>Cash in hand and at bank<br>**Total cash and cash equivalents**<br>**Cash flows from investing activities:**<br>Purchase of fixed assets<br>Cash and cash equivalents at the beginning of the year<br>**Cash and cash equivalents at the end of the year**<br>**Change in cash and cash equivalents in the year**<br>**Net cash provided by / (used in) investing activities**|**£**<br>(2,848)|**£**<br>**232,491**<br>**11,938**<br>**-**<br>**(146,428)**<br>**2,178**<br>**2021**|£<br>(5,555)|£<br>359,900<br>11,368<br>-<br>63,597<br>(64,956)<br>**2020**|
|||**100,180**<br>(2,848)||369,909<br>(5,555)|
||||||
|||97,332<br>400,674||364,354<br>36,320|
|||498,005||400,674|
|||**At 31 March**<br>**2021**<br>£<br>498,005||At 31 March<br>2020<br>**£**<br>400,674|
|||**498,005**||400,674|



52 



DocuSign Envelope ID: D1F210C1-6BCF-4B39-9A71-B626604A381E 

**The Advocacy Academy** 

**Notes to the financial statements** 

## **For the year ended 31 March 2021** 

## **1 Accounting policies** 

## **a) Company information** 

The Advocacy Academy is a charity registered in England with registration number 1161785. Its registered office address is 7 Vining Street, London SW9 9QS. 

## **b) Basis of preparation** 

The financial statements have been prepared in accordance with Accounting and Reporting by Charities: Statement of Recommended Practice applicable to charities preparing their accounts in accordance with the Financial Reporting Standard applicable in the UK and Republic of Ireland (FRS 102) (effective 1 January 2015) - (Charities SORP FRS 102), the Financial Reporting Standard applicable in the UK and Republic of Ireland (FRS 102) and Update Bulletin 2, and the Charities Act 2011. The accounts are presented in GBP rounded to £1, which is the functional currency of the charity. Assets and liabilities are initially recognised at historical cost or transaction value unless otherwise stated in the relevant accounting policy or note. 

## **c) Public benefit entity** 

The charitable company meets the definition of a public benefit entity under FRS 102. 

## **d) Going concern** 

The trustees assess whether the use of going concern is appropriate i.e. whether there are any material uncertainties related to events or conditions that may cast significant doubt on the ability of the charity to continue as a going concern. The trustees make this assessment in respect of a period of one year from the date of approval of the financial statements. In making this assessment the trustees have considered the impact of Covid 19. 

Annual budgets have been revised taking this into account with prudent figures for both income and expenditure. The charity holds significant reserves and has liquid assets in the form of cash held in short term deposits. 

For this reason the trustees continue to adopt the going concern basis in preparing the financial statements. 

## **e) Income** 

Income, including from Government and other grants, whether 'capital' or 'income', is recognised when the charity has entitlement to the funds, any performance conditions attached to the income have been met, it is probable that the income will be received and that the amount can be measured reliably. 

Grants with performance-related conditions are only included in the SoFA once the charity has provided the related goods or services or met the performance related conditions. 

Gift Aid receivable is included in income when there is a valid declaration from the donor. Any Gift Aid amount recovered on a donation is allocated to a separate fund unless the donor or terms of the appeal has specified otherwise and instead is treated as an addition to the same fund as the initial donation. 

## **f) Donations of gifts, services and facilities** 

Donated services (including the time given to the organisation by volunteers) and facilities are included in the SOFA when received at the value of the gift to the charity, provided the value can be measured reliably. Where appropriate, donated services and facilities are recognised as income with an equivalent amount recognised as an expense under the appropriate heading in the SOFA. 

In accordance with the Charities SORP (FRS 102), volunteer time is not recognised so refer to the trustees’ annual report for more information about their contribution. 

## **g) Interest receivable** 

Interest on funds held on deposit is included when receivable. 

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**The Advocacy Academy** 

**Notes to the financial statements** 

## **For the year ended 31 March 2021** 

## **1 Accounting policies (continued)** 

## **h) Fund accounting** 

Restricted funds are to be used for specific purposes as laid down by the donor.  Expenditure which meets these criteria is charged to the fund. 

Unrestricted funds are donations and other incoming resources received or generated for the charitable purposes. 

Designated funds are unrestricted funds earmarked by the trustees for particular purposes. 

## **i) Expenditure and irrecoverable VAT** 

Expenditure is recognised once there is a legal or constructive obligation to make a payment to a third party, it is probable that settlement will be required and the amount of the obligation can be measured reliably. Expenditure is classified under the following activity headings: 

Costs of raising funds relate to the costs incurred by the charitable company in inducing third parties to make voluntary contributions to it, as well as the cost of any activities with a fundraising purpose. Expenditure on charitable activities includes the costs of offering fellowships, programmens and campaigns and delivering related services undertaken to further the purposes of the charity and their associated support costs. 

Other expenditure represents those items not falling into any other heading. 

Irrecoverable VAT is charged as a cost against the activity for which the expenditure was incurred. 

## **j) Allocation of support costs** 

Resources expended are allocated to the particular activity where the cost relates directly to that activity. However, the cost of overall direction and administration of each activity (support costs), comprising the salary and overhead costs of the central function, is apportioned on the following basis which are an estimate, based on staff time, of the amount attributable to each activity. 

|Social Justice Leadership Fellowship|37%|
|---|---|
|Alumni and campaigns|27%|
|Commissioning (spark programme)|20%|
|Just Education|11%|
|Power + Privilege Workshops|5%|



Where information about the aims, objectives and projects of the charity is provided to potential beneficiaries, the costs associated with this publicity are allocated to charitable expenditure. 

Governance costs, which are considered a category of support costs, are the costs associated with the governance arrangements of the charity. These costs are associated with constitutional and statutory requirements and include any costs associated with the strategic management of the charity’s activities. 

## **k) Tangible fixed assets** 

Items of equipment are capitalised where the purchase price exceeds £250. Depreciation costs are allocated to activities on the basis of the use of the related assets in those activities. Assets are reviewed for impairment if circumstances indicate their carrying value may exceed their net realisable value and value in use. 

Depreciation is provided at rates calculated to write down the cost of each asset to its estimated residual value over its expected useful life. The depreciation rates in use are as follows: 

Buildings 5 years Fixtures and fittings 5 years Office equipment 5 years 

## **l) Financial Instruments** 

The charity only has financial assets and financial liabilities of a kind that qualify as basic financial instruments. Basic financial instruments are initially recognised at transaction value and subsequently measured at their settlement value. 

## **Financial assets** 

Trade and other debtors are recognised at the settlement amount due after any trade discount offered. Prepayments are valued at the amount prepaid net of any trade discounts due. 

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DocuSign Envelope ID: D1F210C1-6BCF-4B39-9A71-B626604A381E 

## **The Advocacy Academy** 

## **Notes to the financial statements** 

## **For the year ended 31 March 2021** 

## **1 Accounting policies (continued)** 

## **Financial Liabilities** 

Creditors and provisions are recognised where the charity has a present obligation resulting from a past event that will probably result in the transfer of funds to a third party and the amount due to settle the obligation can be measured or estimated reliably. Creditors and provisions are normally recognised at their settlement amount after allowing for any trade discounts due. 

## **m) Cash at bank and in hand** 

Cash at bank and cash in hand includes cash and short term highly liquid investments with a short maturity of three months or less from the date of acquisition or opening of the deposit or similar account.  Cash balances exclude any funds held on behalf of service users. 

## **n) Significant accounting policies** 

In the application of the company’s accounting policies, the charity is required to make judgements, estimates and assumptions about the carrying amount of assets and liabilities that are not readily apparent from other sources. The estimates and associated assumptions are based on historical experience and other factors that are considered to be relevant. Actual results may differ from these estimates. 

There are no estimates and assumptions that are considered to have a significant risk of causing a material adjustment to the financial statements in a future period. 

## **2 Income from donations** 

|Donated Facilities (note 15)<br>Gift aid claim<br>Government grants - COVID<br>Other Income<br>Grant Funding<br>Donations|Unrestricted<br>£<br>350,652<br>-<br>53,858<br>4,369<br>30,386<br>-|£<br>148,013<br>95,000<br>-<br>-<br>-<br>-<br>Restricted|**2021 total**<br>**Total**<br>**£**<br>**498,665**<br>**95,000**<br>**53,858**<br>**4,369**<br>**30,386**<br>**-**|2020<br>Total<br>£<br>596,150<br>95,000<br>43,990<br>1,879<br>-<br>6,279|
|---|---|---|---|---|
||439,265|243,013|**682,278**|743,298|



Government grants include £10,000 received from LB Lambeth for business relief during the first lockdown and £20,386 received for business rate relief during subsequent lockdowns during COVID. These grants have been recognised on an accruals basis. 

Income in 2020 comprised of unrestricted income of £404,648 and restricted income of £338,650. 

## **3 Income from charitable activities** 

|Total income from charitable activities<br>Other earned income<br>Alumni and campaigns<br>Commissioning (spark programme)<br>Just Education<br>Workshops|Unrestricted<br>£<br>-<br>-<br>-<br>1,550<br>-|£<br>36,000<br>12,000<br>-<br>-<br>7,500<br>Restricted|**2021**<br>**Total**<br>**£**<br>**36,000**<br>**12,000**<br>**-**<br>**1,550**<br>**7,500**|2020<br>Total<br>£<br>3,223<br>16,500<br>55,030<br>5,380<br>-|
|---|---|---|---|---|
||1,550|55,500|**57,050**|80,133|



Income in 2020 comprised of unrestricted income of £8,603 and restricted income of £71,530. 

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DocuSign Envelope ID: D1F210C1-6BCF-4B39-9A71-B626604A381E 

## **The Advocacy Academy** 

## **Notes to the financial statements** 

## **For the year ended 31 March 2021** 

- **4 Analysis of expenditure** 

|Staff costs (Note 5)<br>Temporary staff<br>Campus for Young Activists (note 14)<br>Accommodation and venue hire<br>Office and administration costs<br>Programme delivery costs<br>Marketing<br>Staff recruitment, travel and wellbeing<br>Trustees<br>Depreciation<br>Support costs<br>**Total expenditure 2021**<br>Total expenditure 2020|**Cost of**<br>**raising**<br>**funds**<br>**£**<br>**32,347**<br>**11,846**<br>**-**<br>**-**<br>**1,925**<br>**2,524**<br>**831**<br>**812**<br>**-**<br>**-**||**Charitable activities**|**Charitable activities**|**Charitable activities**||**Total**<br>**Charitable**<br>**activities**<br>**165,011**<br>**73,231**<br>**-**<br>**1,123**<br>**11,524**<br>**31,022**<br>**4,343**<br>**12,001**<br>**-**<br>**-**<br>**298,255**<br>158,297|Support<br>costs<br>£<br>29,462<br>4,229<br>95,000<br>1,450<br>2,749<br>10,466<br>1,148<br>1,811<br>44<br>11,938|**2021 Total**<br>**£**<br>**226,820**<br>**89,306**<br>**95,000**<br>**2,573**<br>**16,198**<br>**44,012**<br>**6,322**<br>**14,624**<br>**44**<br>**11,938**|2020<br>Total<br>£<br>156,509<br>65,076<br>95,000<br>28,091<br>27,095<br>66,654<br>2,153<br>11,364<br>221<br>11,368|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|||Social Justice<br>Leadership<br>Fellowship<br>£<br>61,410<br>28,553<br>-<br>1,360<br>2,809<br>19,042<br>1,518<br>8,274<br>-<br>-|Alumni and<br>campaigns<br>£<br>44,098<br>26,624<br>-<br>763<br>2,584<br>3,362<br>707<br>1,291<br>-<br>-|£<br>33,361<br>8,192<br>-<br>-<br>2,426<br>4,245<br>706<br>812<br>-<br>-<br>Commissioning<br>(spark<br>programme)|Just<br>Education<br>£<br>18,177<br>8,153<br>-<br>(1,000)<br>1,852<br>2,173<br>706<br>812<br>-<br>-<br>|Power +<br>Privilege<br>Workshops<br>£<br>7,965<br>1,709<br>-<br>-<br>1,853<br>2,200<br>706<br>812<br>-<br>-|||||
||**50,285**<br>-|122,966<br>58,911|79,429<br>42,304|49,742<br>32,004|30,873<br>17,437|15,245<br>7,641||158,297<br>(158,297)|**506,837**<br>-|463,531<br>-|
||**50,285**|**181,877**|**121,733**|**81,746**|**48,310**|**22,886**|||**506,837**|**463,531**|
||46,975|192,053|125,857|17,189|54,214|27,243|||463,531||



Of the total expenditure, £186,813 was unrestricted (2020: £124,632) and £320,024 was restricted (2020: £338,899). 

## **Supports costs for 2020 consist of the following.** 

|Staff costs<br>Office and administration costs<br>Programme delivery costs<br>Trustees<br>Depreciation|**2020**<br>**Total**<br>**£**<br>13,480<br>35,625<br>15,401<br>221<br>11,368|
|---|---|
||76,095|



56 



DocuSign Envelope ID: D1F210C1-6BCF-4B39-9A71-B626604A381E 

## **The Advocacy Academy** 

## **Notes to the financial statements** 

## **For the year ended 31 March 2021** 

## **5 Analysis of staff costs and the cost of key management personnel** 

Staff costs were as follows: 

|Employer’s contribution to defined contribution pension schemes<br>Salaries and wages<br>Social security costs|**2021**<br>**£**<br>**204,086**<br>**17,661**<br>**5,072**|2020<br>£<br>142,299<br>11,062<br>3,148|
|---|---|---|
||**226,820**|156,509|



No employee earned more than £60,000 during the year (2020: nil). 

The total employee benefits including pension contributions of the key management personnel, made up of CEO, Commercial Director, Programmes Director and Community Director were £157,672 (2020: £84,517). Amelia stepped down as CEO on 16 July 2021 and Saba Safi started as CEO on 9 August 2021. 

## **6 Staff numbers** 

The average number of employees (head count based on number of staff employed) during the year was as follows: 

|Cost of raising funds<br>Power + Privilege Workshops<br>Alumni and campaigns<br>Just Education<br>Governance and support<br>Social Justice Leadership Fellowship<br>Commissioning (spark programme)|**2021**<br>**No.**<br>**0.9**<br>**1.7**<br>**1.3**<br>**1.0**<br>**0.5**<br>**0.2**<br>**1.1**|2020<br>No.|
|---|---|---|
||**6.7**|4.0|



## **7 Related party transactions** 

Trustees were reimbursed expenses of £44 for travel or subsistence during the year (2020: £221). 

During the year, Thalia Papanicolaou, trustee, was paid remuneration of £957 for undertaking interviews and assessments for the charity. 

No charity trustees were paid or received any other benefits from employment with the charity in the year (2020: £nil).  No other charity trustee received payment for professional or other services supplied to the charity (2020: £nil). 

There are no other related party transactions to disclose for 2021 (2020: none). 

## **8 Taxation** 

The charitable company is exempt from corporation tax to the extent that all its income is charitable and is applied for charitable purposes. 

57 



DocuSign Envelope ID: D1F210C1-6BCF-4B39-9A71-B626604A381E 

## **The Advocacy Academy** 

## **Notes to the financial statements** 

## **For the year ended 31 March 2021** 

|**9**<br>Building<br>£<br>49,148<br>-<br>49,148<br>10,709<br>9,829<br>20,538<br>28,610<br>38,439<br>All of the above assets are used for charitable purposes.<br>**At the end of the year**<br>At the start of the year<br>At the end of the year<br>At the end of the year<br>At the start of the year<br>Charge for the year<br>At the start of the year<br>Additions in year<br>**Cost**<br>**Depreciation**<br>**Net book value**<br>**Tangible fixed assets**|Building<br>£<br>49,148<br>-|Fixtures and<br>fittings<br>£<br>2,984<br>-|Office<br>equipment<br>£<br>4,709<br>2,848|**Total**<br>**£**<br>**56,841**<br>**2,848**|
|---|---|---|---|---|
||49,148|2,984|7,557|**59,689**|
||10,709<br>9,829|612<br>597|1,108<br>1,512|**12,429**<br>**11,938**|
||20,538|1,209|2,620|**24,367**|
||28,610|1,775|4,937|**35,322**|
||38,439|2,372|3,601|44,412|
||||||



## **10 Debtors** 

|Grant debtors<br>Prepayments and accrued income|**2021**<br>**£**<br>**-**<br>**187,010**|2020<br>£<br>39,575<br>1,007|
|---|---|---|
||**187,010**|40,582|



## **11 Creditors: amounts falling due within one year** 

|Trade creditors<br>Taxation and social security<br>Accruals|**2021**<br>**£**<br>**8,675**<br>**10,028**<br>**4,678**|2020<br>£<br>5,686<br>4,367<br>11,150|
|---|---|---|
||**23,381**|21,203|



## **12 Analysis of net assets between funds** 

|Net current assets<br>**Net assets at the end of the year**<br>Tangible fixed assets|General<br>unrestricted<br>£<br>35,322<br>351,517|£<br>-<br>240,000<br>Designated|Restricted<br>£<br>-<br>70,117|**Total funds**<br>**2021**<br>**£**<br>**35,322**<br>**661,634**|
|---|---|---|---|---|
||**386,839**|**240,000**|**70,117**|**696,956**|



58 



DocuSign Envelope ID: D1F210C1-6BCF-4B39-9A71-B626604A381E 

## **The Advocacy Academy** 

## **Notes to the financial statements** 

## **For the year ended 31 March 2021** 

**12 Analysis of net assets between funds (continued)** 

|**13**<br>Lankellychase Foundation<br>Paul Hamlyn Foundation<br>Earned Income (Just Education)<br>Unilever UKCR<br>L.B. Lambeth CLIPS<br>Fearless Futures<br>BBC Children in Need<br>BBC Children in Need - Booster fund<br>**Total restricted funds**<br>Total designated funds<br>**General funds**<br>Net current assets<br>**Designated funds:**<br>Commissioning<br>Tangible fixed assets<br>**Movements in funds**<br>**Total funds**<br>**Total unrestricted funds**<br>**Restricted funds:**<br>Stewart Investors<br>**Unrestricted funds:**<br>Donated Facilities<br>**Net assets at the start of the year**<br>Lambeth VCS Fund<br>Young Londoner's Fund<br>City Bridge Trust - LCRF|At 1 April<br>2020<br>£<br>59,000<br>25,000<br>7,628<br>-<br>-<br>-<br>-<br>-<br>-<br>-<br>-<br>-|General<br>unrestricted<br>£<br>44,412<br>28,425|£<br>-<br>300,000<br>Designated|Restricted<br>£<br>-<br>91,628|**Total funds**<br>**2020**<br>**£**<br>**44,412**<br>**420,053**|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|||**72,837**|**300,000**|**91,628**|**464,465**|
|||Incoming<br>resources &<br>gains<br>£<br>-<br>-<br>-<br>5,000<br>28,800<br>65,000<br>36,000<br>12,000<br>95,000<br>7,500<br>36,213<br>10,000<br>3,000|Outgoing<br>resources &<br>losses<br>£<br>(17,000)<br>(25,000)<br>(7,628)<br>(5,000)<br>(28,800)<br>(65,000)<br>(24,343)<br>(12,000)<br>(95,000)<br>(7,500)<br>(19,753)<br>(10,000)<br>(3,000)|Transfers<br>£<br>-<br>-<br>-<br>-<br>-<br>-<br>-<br>-<br>-<br>-<br>-<br>-|**At 31 March**<br>**2021**<br>**£**<br>**42,000**<br>**-**<br>**-**<br>**-**<br>**-**<br>**-**<br>**11,657**<br>**-**<br>**-**<br>**-**<br>**16,460**<br>**-**<br>**-**|
||91,628|298,513|(320,024)|-|**70,117**|
||300,000|-|(60,000)|-|**240,000**|
||300,000|-|(60,000)|-|**240,000**|
||72,837|440,815|(126,813)|-|**386,839**|
||372,837|440,815|(186,813)|-|**626,839**|
||464,465|739,328|(506,837)|-|**696,956**|



59 



DocuSign Envelope ID: D1F210C1-6BCF-4B39-9A71-B626604A381E 

## **The Advocacy Academy** 

## **Notes to the financial statements** 

## **For the year ended 31 March 2021** 

## **13 Movements in funds (continued)** 

|Lankellychase Foundation<br>Paul Hamlyn Foundation<br>Earned Income (Just Education)<br>WF Southall Trust<br>BBC Children in Need<br>Smart Pension<br>**Total restricted funds**<br>Total designated funds<br>**General funds**<br>Donated Facilities<br>Tudor Trust<br>The Rank Foundation<br>Commissioning<br>GLA<br>**Unrestricted funds:**<br>**Designated funds:**<br>**Total funds**<br>Stewart Investors<br>**Total unrestricted funds**<br>The London Community Foundation<br>Major donors<br>**Restricted funds:**|At 1 April<br>2019<br>£<br>-<br>-<br>(9,030)<br>11,150<br>10,000<br>6,588<br>1,638<br>-<br>-<br>-<br>-<br>-<br>-|Incoming<br>resources &<br>gains<br>£<br>95,000<br>95,000<br>55,030<br>-<br>10,000<br>-<br>-<br>16,500<br>95,000<br>3,000<br>10,000<br>1,850<br>28,800|Outgoing<br>resources &<br>losses<br>£<br>(36,000)<br>(70,000)<br>(38,372)<br>(11,150)<br>(20,000)<br>(6,588)<br>(1,638)<br>(16,500)<br>(95,000)<br>(3,000)<br>(10,000)<br>(1,850)<br>(28,800)|Transfers<br>£<br>-<br>-<br>-<br>-<br>-<br>-<br>-<br>-<br>-<br>-<br>-<br>-<br>-|**At 31 March**<br>**2020**<br>**£**<br>**59,000**<br>**25,000**<br>**7,628**<br>**-**<br>**-**<br>**-**<br>**-**<br>**-**<br>**-**<br>**-**<br>**-**<br>**-**<br>**-**|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
||20,346|410,180|(338,898)|-|**91,628**|
||-|300,000|-|-|**300,000**|
||-|300,000|-|-|**300,000**|
||84,219|113,250|(124,632)|-|**72,837**|
||84,219|413,250|(124,632)|-|**372,837**|
||104,565|823,430|(463,530)|-|**464,465**|



## **Purposes of restricted funds** 

Lankellychase Foundation - Core costs to deliver Campaigns and work with the Alumni Paul Hamlyn Foundation - Salaries and recruitment costs, new office cost Earned Income (Just Education) - JustEducation 

Lambeth VCS Fund - Social Justice Leadership Fellowship Young Londoner's Fund - Social Justice Leadership Fellowship City Bridge Trust - LCRF - Programmes, Campaigns, Working from Home costs Unilever UKCR - Campaigns Commissioning - Spark L.B. Lambeth CLIPS - real estate Fearless Futures - staff cost BBC Children in Need - Social Justice Leadership Fellowship BBC Children in Need - Booster fund - Programmes, Campaigns, Working from Home costs The London Community Foundation - Social Justice Leadership Fellowship Major Donors - New office cost Tudor Trust - Salaries and recruitment costs The Rank Foundation - New Office Donated facilities - Donated lease on new office HOUSING FOR WOMEN Thrale - Unrestricted funds WF Southall Trust - Social Justice Leadership Fellowship Smart Pension - Spark Programme GLA - Social Justice Leadership Fellowship 

60 



DocuSign Envelope ID: D1F210C1-6BCF-4B39-9A71-B626604A381E 

## **The Advocacy Academy** 

## **Notes to the financial statements** 

## **For the year ended 31 March 2021** 

## **13 Movements in funds (continued)** 

## **Purposes of designated funds** 

The designated reserves will be used to build out new programme areas including but not exclusive to our Alumni programmes (expanding programmes and training to our Alumni), and Spark programmes (short programmes to introduce key concepts to more young people) 

## **14 Operating lease commitments** 

The charity signed a lease on premises in Brixton for a five-year period commencing 18 January 2019. The lease has been donated with the annual charge payable by the charity being a peppercorn amount only. The value of the donation in the current year, based on an open market rate payable on a comparable lease, has been included as income and an equivalent amount charged to expenditure in the SOFA. £95,000 has been recognised in income and expenditure for the year (2020: £95,000) 

## **15 Funds received as agent** 

The charity has acted as an agent for the following third-party , whose aims and objectives are consistent with those of the charity. Funds, held in cash, are administered on the instruction of the principal and recorded ithin a separate genral ledger sub-code and adjusted in financial statements. The movement in funds during the year was: 

|Balance at 1 April 2020<br>Funds received<br>Funds paid out<br>Balance at 31 March 2021 representing cash held|£<br>15,649<br>3,650<br>(7,530)<br>Unbound<br>Philantrophy|£<br>-<br>10,000<br>(4,000)<br>Bossing IT|Charity So<br>White/HS<br>Charity<br>£<br>-<br>6,600<br>(149)|Total<br>15,649<br>20,250<br>(11,679)|
|---|---|---|---|---|
||11,769|6,000|6,451|24,220|



## **16 Pension Commitments** 

The charity operates a defined contribution pension scheme. The assets of the scheme are held separately in an independently administered multi-employer fund. During the year, £5,072 was charged to SOFA (2020: £3,148) and at the balance sheet date £474 was outstanding (2020: £Nil). 

## **17 Legal status of the charity** 

The charity is a company limited by guarantee and has no share capital.  The liability of each member in the event of winding up is limited to £1. 

61