Legacy, the brainchild of Mr Ahmed, is a student-led social action project where students work together to make a difference to their local, and possibly wider, community. The inaugural programme had 20 students, divided into two teams, who met every Thursday to work on raising awareness of, and tackling, issues that are prevalent in Birmingham. The two teams are: Project Reform who took on the issue of homelessness; and Project Switch, who tackled the issue of knife crime – both extremely prevalent matters in our society, particularly to those living in lower-income areas. Empathy was essential during Legacy, and we were able to draw upon the various experiences of the students involved. During weekly sessions, discussions ensued around our goals, strategies to achieve them, and available resources, in order to come up with weekly action plans that capitalised on the skills of all team members. This was done in pursuit of raising awareness of the issue in question as well as to raise capital for the endgame projects and for our partner charities. Both teams employed various strategies, which ranged from bake/food sales (carried out by Project Reform) to assemblies/workshops that both teams utilised to raise awareness amongst students lower down the school. Project Switch also innovatively utilised other communication methods such as writing poems. Perhaps Project Reform’s biggest success was organising a charity evening at “Eurasia”, an award- winning tandoori restaurant, attended by various members of the community, including guests of honour Mayor and Mayoress of Bridgnorth, Cllr. Ron Whittle and Cllr. Mrs Carol Whittle. The successful evening culminated in raising more than £800 from generous donations and raffle tickets, which were drawn at the end of the night. The raffles were priced at £2 per ticket, and included prizes such as a bottle of champagne for third place, a chocolate hamper for second place and a 40% discount at the restaurant for the winner. The money raised will go towards our collaborative charities and survival bags, which are designed to provide the necessities to live. Project Switch also aspired to run a weekly youth club to help educate those in the younger generation on how to avoid knife crime and what to do if someone they knew was involved. The youth club would be in an area where individuals do not have many opportunities and would be a place where teenagers can socialise in a safe and protected environment. This would hopefully reduce the amount of teenagers who could possibly be involved in knife crime. Though fundraising and raising awareness were at the top of the agenda of each team, the start of the year was much more focused on trying to understand the issues we would be tackling and the people affected by them. We spent many sessions trying to bring our bake sales and assemblies to fruition which was incredibly arduous. One of the many highlights of this time period was filming and putting together a digital story that would be shown to the Headmaster in a Dragon’s Den style pitch for money in order to kick-start our projects. Filming the video was important as it required members from each team to really identify and sympathise with the people they would be portraying in the videos in order to accurately portray the issues. Pleasingly, both digital stories were a great success and culminated in the Headmaster awarding £300 to each team. Though our projects are not yet complete, we are nearing completion and both teams can confidently say that they have successfully raised awareness of the aforementioned issues and hopefully caused, at the very least, people in our own school to think differently when it comes to homeless and those involved in knife crime. In conclusion we feel that the name “Legacy” is quite apt for what we wish to achieve. We hope that next year’s Year 12s will continue with our projects. If not, then they could tackle an issue of their own – all in the name of creating a positive social change. Regardless of the outcome, we hope they will have the same passion and drive to contribute towards making Birmingham a better place to live. Ibrahim Kabir, Suhaib Hammad, Ismail Hussain LEGACY 34