JCA student in the Kingswood Voice

Mariama Sanneh, a Year 11 student from John Cabot Academy, has won the National Lottery Young Hero award. This award recognises inspirational individuals, projects and young people who do extraordinary things for their community. Mariama is a junior trustee for Integrate UK, a youth led charity that empowers young people to take an active and positive role in transforming the society they live in. An important part of her role as junior trustee is to lead youth steering groups and reports back to the board. In addition, Mariama has contributed to script writing, performing in the youth friendly media resources, whilst also delivering peer education workshops to students at John Cabot and elsewhere. These have included grooming for radicalisation, FGM and gang and drug culture.

Mariama has devoted vast amounts of time and energy in her own time to being a positive voice for young people and in turn has made a huge contribution to our academy in both peer education and facilitating our Equalities Council. In addition to all of this, Mariama has since been recognised further in Bristol and has won the Bristol Young Heroes Arts and Culture award for all the creative music and media projects she has been involved in.

We are very proud of all the work that Mariama has done to date, and we are excited to see what she does next. Congratulations from all the students and staff at JCA!

This is how the Kingswood Voice reported it.

JCA student in the Kingswood Voice