Lydia Macharia co-founded The Good Hair Co., a two-sided online platform that makes hair care consultation more accessible, affordable, and straightforward for women with textured hair. Lydia has been passionate about her business ever since she and her co-founder had the idea, but life always got in the way. Our programme helped her to feel that it is truly possible to achieve what she has set out for in her business and validated that her foundational work before starting the programme was not in vain.

Priscilla Vivian, founded Vivify Therapy, a multicultural mental health service that supports Africans and Caribbeans in the UK and across the diaspora. Before starting our program, Priscilla was reaching the point of burnout within her work. Starting in early 2019, her career picked up in 2020 as more people were experiencing the need for therapy and stigma was being reduced; meaning more people within Black and ethnic minorities were reaching out for support.

Yeni took part in one of our Voltage Revolution programmes. We had a chat with him to discuss his experience working as a young Black creative, navigating the industry, and their experience on our programme.

My creative interests vary, but I am a postgraduate Illustrator who has had a massive interest in Business Management, Marketing and Art. I have been influenced a lot by music, and my colourful artwork demonstrates exactly how music plays a role in what I create.

Thelma (Dr Tee) is a very passionate and enthusiastic individual who is keen to empower communities. As a researcher, her interests are community development, financial inclusion, and gender justice. Thelma's desire to promote financial inclusion as an instrument for poverty alleviation, mobility, and empowerment resulted in a doctoral degree examining how micro-finance institutions can promote financial inclusion.

Afiya ‘Fi' Titus is ACA exam-qualified with a finance background working to support individuals and entrepreneurs to build their financial futures. She has been a self-employed entrepreneur, sole trader, and limited company director for several years. Her experience also includes leadership and business growth. Her goals in life are to live and work in a way that is as autonomous and flexible as possible.

Thinking Light Coach is an innovative organisation founded by Danielle Cudjoe-Michalski, an entrepreneur dedicated to revolutionising coaching and mentoring for neurodivergent professionals. The primary focus of Thinking Light Coach is to provide comprehensive support and guidance to neurodivergent individuals as they navigate their professional journeys. The organisation offers tailored mentoring and coaching programmes to empower neurodivergent people, helping them create effective coping strategies and succeed in their chosen fields.

In this episode, Antonia has a chat with Movell Dash, a diversity and inclusion expert, trained barrister, and life coach. She is the founder and director of Modas Personal Development. With 15+ years of experience as a Diversity and Inclusion Practitioner Movell has worked with a variety of organisations in the Private and Public sectors, including the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and Goldsmiths, University of London.

Black Then, Black Now is a podcast produced by four young Black Londoners aged 18 to 24, with the support of the Voltage Revolution. Each episode is a conversation between one young person and an elder, providing an intergenerational take on topics such as identity, music, education, and love. This podcast is concerned about change and continuity. What was it like then? And how is it now?

Claude, 23, from Richmond-upon-Thames, has been out of education since 2017 after he was not granted an appropriate placement by his local education authority.

Following years of tribunals and emails to the Department for Education, he created the "The Claudes SEN Law Campaign” which aims to deliver and execute an "Inclusive equal world for Neurodiverse, people with hidden, visible disabilities.

The Black community is often hailed for our resilience and entrepreneurial spirit; however, we do not often hear from Black people operating their businesses at scale.

Due to this, we want to amplify the voices of our community members by celebrating its members and assisting them to promote their work or business.

Founded in 2014, the Hwupenyu project directly supports people with a range of health conditions - including Diabetes, HIV+, High Blood Pressure, Mobility issues, Mental Health conditions, and Hepatitis – through providing information and advice.

At the time, both volunteered supporting their fellow members from the French community in Birmingham with interpretation, reading and responding to letters, attending appointments, making phone calls and anything else that was needed.

For Hannah, as the founder of the Young Ladies Club, personal development is key in helping the girls and young women understand themselves better, the challenges they face, and enabling them to find ways of addressing these challenges and moving forward positively and successfully.

In the last two years, the team of agriculturists has managed 3 farms, had over 500 consultations and trained over 1000 persons both online and onsite. Their core objective is to improve agricultural processes through precision farming. The team were inspired to create their organisation after realising the enormous gap between what they are taught in academia and agriculture in reality.

The company’s tech-enabled social franchise model provides a “business-in-a-box” to young entrepreneurs. New entrepreneurs focus on production, while AquaFarmsAfrica manages other areas of the operational value chain such as procurement, quality control, marketing, sales and logistics.

Having survived breast cancer herself, Shamim was inspired to make a change in her community by turning the pain she went through into something positive. She recognized that her survival was predominantly down to early detection and put her energy into setting up a mobile cancer screening lab, which later incorporated the use of artificial intelligence guided e-oncology services (to detect cervical and breast cancer).

ThinkHER Ambition received £5,000 from Common Call Fund which they will use as part of the development of the mobile app: Bloss.m which will serve the community of young women who engage in their employment and education programmes. Below they outline the need for their application from the perspective of one of the girls in their community: Sabrina.