Consciousness
The future our kids deserve
Evin Schwartz, founder of educational platform Belouga, shares his thoughts on why education ‘needs to flow, not follow’.
18 September 2025
This article first appeared in our International Women’s Day 2026 issue of My Green Pod Magazine. Click here to subscribe to our digital edition and get each issue delivered straight to your inbox
At NextGenLeaders we believe in a better, more sustainable world where everyone can thrive – but crucially, we believe this world should be led by young people with the passion, confidence and skills to make it happen.
Since 2017, NextGenLeaders has worked in schools across Yorkshire, the East Midlands and, more recently, in the South of England to enable young people to cultivate projects that address the problems they see in the world around them. These are often the issues that adults might miss; we are not walking in the shoes of younger generations, and the world we grew up in was very different.
Our mission is to empower socially responsible, purpose-driven young people to tackle the biggest issues of today. The scale of this work is significant.
In the 2024–25 academic year alone, 14 schools and 226 changemakers delivered 30 community projects that reached over 32,000 people.
One project – ‘Street Flow’, in Halifax – began as a group of students determined to address period poverty. Over three years, they built a campaign rooted in empathy and sustainability.
The students distributed Period Packs made using materials rescued from landfill and recycled into wash bags. These were filled with reusable sanitary items, and came with pictorial instruction leaflets to ensure anyone, regardless of language or literacy level, could understand how to use them.
The wash bags were distributed to people on the edges of homelessness, including those sofa surfing, using food banks or engaged with the charity Street Angels, helping to relieve the financial pressure of purchasing sanitary products.
The environmental potential was clear. By promoting a switch to reusable products, the changemakers estimated that they would save 86,900kg of CO2 per person over an individual’s lifetime, reducing the global waste associated with disposable sanitary items.
In Sheffield, ‘Project H’ is tackling food insecurity. Partnering with the MCKS Charitable Foundation and working with school staff to ensure family anonymity, the NextGenLeaders team has delivered over 300 hampers to date. This ensures no student goes hungry or without essential toiletries in their home.
The ‘Sports For All’ team in Bridlington developed a project to focus on inclusion. It worked to organise a sponsored run where the entry fee was a donation of old sportswear. Anything in good condition would be gifted to those who felt that a lack of equipment presented a barrier to participation. Items not in good condition were planned for recycling into punchbags.
As one changemaker noted: ‘My project has helped me realise that there is always something I can do as an individual to help my community.’
While NextGenLeaders projects often focus on sustainability or social justice, the programme is fundamentally about creating well-rounded future leaders.
Staff leads within schools report that their students develop a broad range of essential skills that go far beyond the curriculum, including conflict resolution, strategic thinking, organisation, presentation skills and learning to cooperate with others.
The growth is measurable. In our latest impact report, 90% of staff leads observed an improvement in public speaking among students, while others noted significant gains in leadership and teamwork.
By navigating real-world challenges, such as securing grant funding, pitching to experts and coordinating logistics, students are building a toolkit for life. As Peter Goulding, assistant principal at Abbey Grange Academy, notes: ‘The NextGenLeaders programme has developed Sustainable Development Goal awareness[…] and inspired them to take action[…] It has created a real appetite for long-term change and collaboration across year groups.’
We ensure that privilege never dictates participation; in 2024–25, 69% of our participants met vulnerability criteria.
The programme offers a unique space for students who may struggle in a traditional classroom environment. We work across a range of settings, from traditional schools to alternative provision where students do not attend mainstream lessons, schools for young people with an autism diagnosis and colleges for students who have opted out of school at the age of 14 to attend a more vocational environment.
As one staff lead observed, the school has a ‘great opportunity to engage pupils in the programme that may come from disadvantaged backgrounds or have SEN or behavioural issues and create a group they can be themselves in.’
Through a partnership with York St John University, NextGenLeaders research reveals that before joining, only 9% of participants believed they could create sustainable change. By the end, 94% felt capable.
Teachers report that the programme contributes significantly to schools’ ‘outstanding personal development frameworks’. This contribution has been formally recognised, with the programme receiving positive mentions in three separate Ofsted reports in the last year.
The benefits of the programme extend far beyond the school gates; in 2024–25, the total audience across media and digital channels topped 1.7 million. As Paul Blakey MBE, founder of Street Angels, summarises: ‘The concept of NextGenLeaders and, more importantly, the young people who are part of the programme is simply amazing. The ideas from the young people[…] become realities that are truly changing people and society for the better’.
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