WE ARE THE ADVOCACY ACADEMY
WHO WE ARE
The Advocacy Academy is an activist youth movement of leaders fighting for justice and equality. We serve as the political home for grassroots youth organising and the catalyst for collective action. Our Advocates’ lives have been directly shaped by living in an unjust world, and we exist to turn their anger into action.
We are young, dynamic, ambitious and unapologetic, and we are looking for someone to join us who is as passionate as we are about building the world as it should be.
WE ARE POWER HUNGRY
Young people have often been the catalysts for major social change, from the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee at the heart of the Civil Rights Movement, to the Soweto Uprising mobilising young people to resist the apartheid regime's education policies, to the Sunrise Movement redrawing the electoral map across America. How successfully they achieve real and lasting change depends on whether they are organised and whether they have the right strategy and tactics to be effective.
We would rather everyone acted altruistically, but in this world we get the justice we have the power to compel. The power our Movement is building is not about feeling ‘confident’ or ‘courageous’: power is the ability to act. There is a reason why powerless groups are encouraged to think of power as evil and corrupting - it keeps power in the hands of the people who already have it. We argue that powerlessness can be equally corrupting, as anyone who’s experienced it already knows.
WHAT WE DO
Our flagship programme, the Social Justice Leadership Fellowship, is an immersive six-month crash-course in social justice. Made up of three residential retreats and weekly evening gatherings, the Fellowship is delivered by an outstanding faculty of 250 expert change-makers from more than 50 partners - ranging from Sisters Uncut and the Black Cultural Archives to The New York Times and our patron Helen Hayes MP. Through 400 hours of experiential education and collective action our young Advocates learn to analyse the socio-political conditions in their communities, identify innovative solutions to the injustices they have experienced and build their power to bring about this change.
Every single decision at The Advocacy Academy is taken by our Advocates as part of a “cyclical leadership model”. After the Fellowship programme our young people continue to organise and grow with us, leading our programmes, working with our partner organisations and launching campaigns as members of the Movement. This year we are celebrating our seventh anniversary with 122 Alumni and our main focus going forward will be developing the pathways for their journeys beyond the Fellowship - the Movement Infrastructure. This year we have also launched a new entry into our Alumni with the five-day Spark programme, which will bring on a further forty young people through our programmes each year. While some of these graduates may go on to join the Fellowship, we envisage other joining our Alumni pool directly, making the pathways for different Alumni even more critical to understand, develop and communicate.
THE ADVOCATES' CHARTER
I. A better world is possible. There is nothing inevitable about injustice and inequality.
II. It is our right and our responsibility to build that world.
III. We strive to continually improve ourselves, our communities, and our society.
IV. The lives of ordinary people matter.
V. We are one family. We love and support one another and stand in solidarity with each other.
VI. It is our right to define ourselves, and have our identities celebrated.
VII. We actively work to uncover, acknowledge, and overcome our biases.
VIII. We value experience, and do not do for others what they can do for themselves. Nothing about us without us!
IX. We prize conviction, and support each other to live our values in our everyday lives.
X. We value critical thinking and challenge. We approach discomfort, disagreement and difficult conversations with an open and curious mind.
XI. We practice the powerful combination of education and action.
XII. We work to create inclusive and supportive spaces where we can each be our best selves.
THE ADVOCATES
MORE THAN JUST DREAMERS
SUPPORT THE MOVEMENT
Your donations allow us to create this incredible community of social justice leaders.
education not exclusion + no lost causes
staff
Saba Shafi
Pronoun: she
CEO
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 TAA. She would also like to go into space, if anyone has a ticket.
Imane Maghrani
Pronoun: she
Associate Director Spark Programmes
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 winding path through the private and non-profit sectors, picking up a lot of love for programme management, pedagogy and anti-oppression facilitation along the way. Her greatest passion is elevating the voices of young people around the world. She also sings (rather decently) and plays basketball (rather poorly), and her most important love language is fruit.
Darcey Williamson
Pronoun: she
Head of Cyclical Leadership
Darcey is a youth worker and informal educator whose practice is informed by a radical youth work paradigm. She employs critical education methods and participatory action research, working with others to co-create projects that challenge epistemic and social injustices. As Leadership Director, Darcey leads our Younger Changemaker Apprenticeship programme, training and supporting our Alumni community to develop their leadership practice and social justice education methods to become Changemakers, who are central to our movement.
Dhakshi Suriar
Pronoun: she
Head of Philanthropy
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. Dhakshi enjoys all things social commentary which probably explains why she loves a bit of everything. Talk to her about books, music, TV, podcasts, art, food, fashion and she'll want to unpick the socio-political contexts behind them all.
Fopé Olaleye
Pronoun: they
Political Education Lead
Fopé is an educator and writer, has a degree in politics, a short lived career in student politics and wealth of facilitation experience from Fearless Futures. They have travelled across the country delivering talks and workshops to universities and have only been stranded once. They are now the lead for Political Education and Campaigns at TAA which they are beyond excited to dig their teeth into as their work has always involved campaigning and critical thinking around education. Alongside this, Fopé is an avid buyer of books (and a more hesitant reader of said books). In their free time, they enjoy writing about identity, vulnerability, and intimacy.
Amarah Khan
Pronoun: she
Community Administrator
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. You will often find Amarah naming every plant and giving them a detailed back story.
Lydia Rye
Pronouns: she/they
Campaigns & Organising Director
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 where she oversaw civil society alliances in West London, Nottingham & the Maun Valley and is proudest of her work with Nottingham Citizens to see misogyny recognised as a motivator for hate crime for the first time internationally - soon to be law. She is a trustee for the new feminist organising project Love & Power and a host for The Dinner Party, a peer led grief support group. In her spare time she tries to paint & regularly braces hypothermia at the local lido.
Alex & molly
Pronouns: she/they
Transformative Culture Advisors
Alex (she/they) and molly (she/they) are long time friends of TAA, having worked in various roles over the years. They are both students, researchers, and facilitators of transformative justice. molly’s background is in sexual violence support work and over the last five years she has focused her energies into transformative non-carceral approaches to harm. Alex specialised in RJ in schools, before moving to an explicit transformative and abolitionist framework for this work, they now collaborate with leaders in schools and non-profits to embed the values of transformative justice work at a structural level.
artist in residence
Rhianna Kemi (pronoun: she) is a playwright, facilitator and researcher. She has been working with The Advocacy Academy in various roles for several years now - organising the 2019 & 2021 alumni residentials, and changemaking for the Fellowship and Spark programmes. She has now found her place at TAA as Artist-in-Residence, where she facilitates arts partnerships and supports alumni-led creative projects. Rhianna is also Associate Artist at Coney, an award-winning interactive theatre company. She has recently completed her first play, and spends a lot of her time over-analysing the scripts and plot devices of various TV shows.
Eddie Pile (pronoun: they)
YOU'RE AWESOME, LET'S TALK.
Privacy Policy The Advocacy Academy is committed to safeguarding your privacy. This Policy explains how we collect and use personal information. Please read the following carefully to understand our views and practices regarding your personal data and how we will treat it. By visiting theadvocacyacademy.com our website you are accepting and consenting to the practices described in this policy. For the purpose of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) (Regulation (EU) 2016/679) (GDPR), the data controller is Zoe Tyndall (zoe.tyndall@gmail.com) To contact the data protection officer you should email amarah@theadvocacyacademy.com References to ‘we’, ‘our’ and ‘us’ within this Privacy Policy are to The Advocacy Academy. The information we collect This Policy applies to information you give us, through our website or by corresponding with us and information collected by us as you visit or interact with our website. The data you provide may include: Your name Your email Your contact details The data we collect about you may include, but is not limited to: Your IP address Information about your browser and operating systems Information about your visit, this may include but is not limited to pages looked at, visit duration, errors encountered and interaction with the pages How we use your information Any personal information we collect from this website is used in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation (EU) 2016/679) and other applicable laws. The information you provide allows us to do the following: If you have made an enquiry then we will use your contact details to respond to your enquiry. If you opted in to our newsletter then we send you our newsletter. To provide you with the information, products and services that you request from us. To provide you with the information about other goods and services we offer that are similar to those that you have already purchased or enquired about. To notify you about changes to our services. To protect keep our website safe and secure. To improve our website and personalise it for you and your computer. To provide interactive features To measure the effectiveness of our advertising It is our policy to ensure that your personal data is not made accessible to unauthorised individuals. We have taken reasonable steps to protect both the digital and physical storage of data. We strive to protect your personal information, we cannot ensure or warrant the security of any information you transmit to us and you do so at your own risk. Your data may be kept if it is required for legal or accounting reasons. Disclosure of your information We may share your information with any member of our group, which means our subsidiaries, our ultimate holding company and its subsidiaries, as defined in section 1159 of the UK Companies Act 2006. Analytics and search engines providers that assist us in the improvement and optimisation of our site may collect data about your IP and computer set up. How long do we keep your data We will not retain your personal information longer than necessary. If legally required or if it is reasonably necessary to meet regulatory requirements, resolve disputes, prevent fraud and abuse, or enforce our Terms and Conditions, we may also retain some of your information for a limited period of time as required, even after it is no longer needed to provide services to you. Access to your personal information 1. If you would like to update or remove the data we have about you please submit a request to the data protection officer. 2. If you wish to unsubscribe from our email newsletter you should use the unsubscribe link at the bottom of the email. Should this not work please contact the data protection officer, using the details at the start of this policy. 3. If you would like to request access to the data we have about you please submit a request to the data protection officer. 4. If an access request is deemed by us to be unfounded or excessive we may charge a reasonable fee. If you request further copies of your data then we may charge for administrative fees. Complaints If you wish to make a complaint about our use of your data please contact the data protection officer. Updates to this policy This Policy was last updated in August 2021. Any changes we make to this policy will be posted to this page.