Advocacy Academy: Building Youth Power and Rewriting the Future of Social Change in the United Kingdom

The Silicon Review

There are moments in history when the loudest voices are not coming from boardrooms or parliaments, but from classrooms, community centres and street corners. Across the United Kingdom, young people are raising urgent questions about poverty, climate justice, racial inequality, housing, education and representation. Many of them carry lived experiences of these challenges. Yet too often, they are asked to wait their turn. Advocacy Academy was created to change that reality.

A Home Built to Showcase Youth Power

The Advocacy Academy has become a national force in youth organising, but it describes itself more simply as a home. A home for young people with lived experience of injustice. A home where identity is explored, community is built, and action becomes possible. For over a decade, the organisation has worked with more than 15,000 young people across the UK. Its mission is clear. It does not speak on behalf of young people. It shifts power directly to them. Particularly to those pushed furthest from it by race, class, disability, migration status, gender, or sexuality.

The challenges facing Britain’s young people are stark. Nearly a third of children live below the poverty line. Trust in political leadership is painfully low. Mental health struggles are increasing. Many young people feel disconnected from decision makers and disillusioned about their future. When opportunity feels distant and representation feels hollow, frustration grows. Without the right support, that frustration can turn into despair or misdirection. The Advocacy Academy was built to change that trajectory. It was built to turn disempowerment into leadership.

Confronting Disconnection with Community

At the heart of the organisation’s work is a belief that power grows in community. In Brixton, South London, the organisation established the Liberation Centre, a youth led political and cultural space that has quickly become a hub for organising and belonging. In its first year alone, more than 3,000 people walked through its doors, drawn only by word of mouth. Many young people now call it their political home.

The space is more than bricks and mortar. It represents a shift from isolation to solidarity. It is where young organisers meet others who understand their experiences. It is where ideas are tested, campaigns are born, and confidence is rebuilt. It is where young people realise they are not alone.

This local grounding is matched by national ambition. Through its Roots to Rise programme, The Advocacy Academy trains young leaders across the country to take action on environmental challenges. Each year, up to 100 young people step into organising roles, supported to mobilise thousands more. Delivered in partnership with organisations including Football Beyond Borders, National Youth Agency, and Friends of the Earth, the programme strengthens youth organisations nationwide to lead change for a fairer and more sustainable future. The message is simple. Young people are not the leaders of tomorrow. They are the leaders of today.

Leading through Campaigns that Redefine Representation

The organisation’s impact is perhaps most visible through its campaign groups. These are not staff led initiatives designed in boardrooms. They are created and driven by young people themselves, shaped by their lived experiences and urgent concerns.

One group challenges the absence of diverse histories and voices in school curricula, arguing that when students do not see themselves reflected in education, the whole nation loses. Another campaign raises awareness about the impact of parental imprisonment on children and families, demanding compassion and structural change.

The Halo Collective, formed by members of the Academy, has secured commitments from nearly 1,000 schools and businesses to adopt the Halo Code, ending discrimination against afro textured hair. Major organisations such as Marks & Spencer and L'Oréal have signed on. What began as a youth led idea has grown into a national movement influencing workplace and school policies.

Another campaign group, My Uncle Is Not Pablo Escobar, has successfully pushed institutions including Lambeth Council, Arts Council England, and King's College London to recognise the Latinx community more accurately in official data. Their sold out theatre performance in Brixton amplified their message far beyond traditional advocacy spaces.

Housing activists within the Academy achieved a landmark commitment from Lambeth Council and secured land from Transport for London to build South London’s first Community Land Trust, creating permanently affordable homes for local people. These victories share a common thread. They are led by young people who once felt powerless and now shape policy, culture, and community.

Building Infrastructure for Sustained Change

The Advocacy Academy understands that movements cannot survive on passion alone. They require structure, training, and long term investment. Its model works across three dimensions. It organises nationally to tackle big systemic issues. It digs deep in local communities to build strong, joyful spaces. And it builds infrastructure so youth organising can thrive in other towns, cities, and organisations.

Over eleven years, the organisation has chosen the slow road. It has invested in relationships, leadership development, and co creation. Young people do not simply participate in programmes. They design them. They shape strategy. They influence how the organisation responds to new challenges.

This commitment to shared decision making is captured in its principle of ‘Nothing About Us Without Us.’ Power is not symbolic. It is practical. Decisions are made with young people, not for them.

Building a Future with the Youth

The Advocacy Academy stands at a powerful intersection of community, courage, and change. It recognises the harsh realities young people face, but it refuses to let those realities define them. Instead, it provides tools, networks, and belief. In a country where many young people feel shut out of political processes and economic opportunity, the organisation offers something radical. It offers ownership. It offers belonging. It offers proof that collective action can shift institutions and reshape narratives.

The Advocacy Academy is not simply nurturing activists. It is cultivating architects of a fairer Britain. And in doing so, it is reminding the nation that its future will not be decided in isolation from its youth, but in partnership with them.

Leadership Rooted in Purpose

Saba Shafi serves as the CEO of Advocacy Academy. Since joining Advocacy Academy in 2017 and becoming CEO in 2021, she has guided the organisation with clarity and conviction. With a background in management consulting and venture capital, and experience supporting activist movements in the United States, she chose to dedicate her leadership to social justice and youth organising. She also serves on the Board of Citizens UK.

She is deeply concerned by how climate and migration are treated as separate issues in political debate. Yet her hope is renewed every time she works alongside young campaigners who prove that change is already underway.