JANET TOKITSU
The Change I Want to Bring to the World
In my lifetime, I would like to make the world a happier, kinder, and more inclusive place. It’s a big task but I believe a huge difference can be made with little steps every day. For me, the direction I want to explore is teaching and creating change this way. Through my work with young people already, I have gotten to see the impact of leading and inspiring young people and giving them the tools to make changes in their lives and communities. This has been so rewarding and can be a way to create change on a small scale with potential for a large impact.
In the classroom and in my personal life, I want to support the goals of the Black Lives Matter Movement and to continue to work towards racial equality for many minority groups. One way I want to do this is to help lead and facilitate open conversations and workshops between POCs and non-POCs who may struggle to talk to each other day-to-day about real issues. I would like to do this in the UK which sometimes can be overlooked as a lot of media focus is to do with the US.
How I’ve Been Involved in Changemaking So Far
My main focus in changemaking is to play a part in creating racial and cultural equality in the UK mainly through spreading awareness and throughout my degree I have had several opportunities to speak about the experiences of POC students. When I was the School of Politics Representative, I created and co-chaired a student-led Equality and Inclusion Committee and one example of what we were able to accomplish as a team was to lead a workshop around Blackfishing (this is a phenomenon in marketing and social media where white people are made to look as if they are black) and to highlight the problems of this.
In my personal and work life, I’ve been involved in changemaking primarily through my leadership roles within the National Citizen Service. I have worked for the organization since 2018 as both Assistant Team Leader and Team Leader and my roles consisted of leading groups of 15-17 year olds through a 2-4 week programme that involves learning more about post-16 routes in education, outdoor skills and designing a charity project in their local community. Helping these local communities has been amazing, but the greatest change I helped create was supporting their confidence growth and assisting their inspirations.
What Drew Me to This Fellowship
I first heard about the Mentora Youth Changemaker Fellowship through the Laidlaw Scholars Network which is an international platform for existing Laidlaw Scholars who work on leadership development and undergraduate research at their respective universities. When I looked further into the Fellowship I quickly realized that it was an incredibly rare program in many ways. One reason was that it offered an opportunity to travel outside of the UK and meet other like-minded international Fellows with different backgrounds and passions and another reason is that the leadership development approach offers a more ethical and spiritual focus which I had not seen before. The Fellowship will also give me the tools to become more self-reflective about my goals and actions to be able to be a more successful leader in the future.
