VANESSA BOODHOO
Vanessa knows what it means to search for belonging.
When she moved to the UK with her family, South London became the place where she began to find it. In the people, the conversations, and the communities organising for change, she discovered something powerful: a sense that collective action could shape a different future.
What brings Vanessa the most hope is witnessing others who refuse to accept injustice as inevitable. She speaks about the energy of young people who want to mobilise, organise, and challenge the systems around them. For her, those moments of shared determination are where possibility lives.
But alongside that hope sits a deep frustration.
Vanessa has watched the places that once held communities together steadily disappear. Community land being sold. Spaces replaced by developments that prioritise profit over people. For many young people, the result is simple but devastating: there are fewer places to gather, breathe, and grow.
To Vanessa, space is not a luxury. It is a basic human need.
Without it, isolation grows. Without it, young people are pushed out of the very communities they belong to. She speaks passionately about the way Black youth are often criminalised simply for being outside, while meaningful, self-affirming spaces for them barely exist. The question she asks is both simple and urgent: if young people are not given places to belong, where are they supposed to go?
Her activism is rooted in this reality.
Vanessa is deeply committed to fighting for housing justice and resident-led change. She believes too many decisions about communities are made by people who have never lived the realities they shape. From damp and mould in homes to insecure housing conditions that affect entire families, she is determined to challenge systems that treat these experiences as acceptable.
Yet her journey has also required personal growth. Alongside her activism, Vanessa has learned the importance of protecting her own wellbeing, setting boundaries and ensuring her mental health remains strong enough to sustain the work she cares so deeply about.
What drives her forward is a vision of something better.
A society rebuilt around human connection. Communities where people are centred, not profit. A future where young people are not just consulted, but leading.
In five years, Vanessa hopes to be investing directly back into the communities that shaped her, funding initiatives of her own, working alongside young people, strengthening youth work practices, and helping cultivate the next generation of leaders fighting for housing rights and social justice.
For Vanessa, being recognised is more than an honour. It is a reminder that her voice, her work, and her commitment to community are seen.