My real journey into youth and community development began after I graduation from my youth and community work degree with listening—often in meetings where elders would voice deep frustrations about the persistent challenges facing our community. But over time, I noticed a pattern: a cycle of conversation without action, reflection without progression. That realisation became a turning point. I began to shift my thinking, exploring how I could apply the professional youth work skills framework to become not just a participant in the conversation, but an agent of meaningful change.

 

In my community, young people were being murdered, exploited, criminalised, impoverished, and left feeling powerless. This reality demanded more than sympathy—it required strategy. I turned to the praxis of youth work: a method rooted in reflection, action, and transformation. As I looked deeper, I saw that our community was saturated in trauma. I knew healing had to be central. So, I embedded trauma recovery into my approach, ensuring my practice honoured both the pain and the potential of those I served. I worked with the tools I had—but I kept building.

 

Two words continued to echo in my mind: solution and focused. They became more than a mindset; they became a mission. That mission became Solution Focused World. I trained in Solution Focused Brief Therapy with Elliott Connie and integrated it with AMBIT (Adaptive Mentalization-Based Integrative Treatment), weaving these therapeutic models into a dynamic, culturally rooted youth work practice. This allowed me to make measurable impact—locally and beyond—across youth justice, public health, housing, family services, violence reduction, faith-based work, and race equity.

 

Today, I am pioneering a new frontier: embedding financial safeguarding within youth work. Financial exploitation—through fraud, scamming, money muling, and debt—disproportionately harms Black communities and those from low-income households. Yet, financial institutions remain disconnected from the very communities most at risk. This gap deepens inequality and leads to compounding harms—mental, physical, and economic.

 

My mission is clear: to bridge that divide. I aim to embed financial safeguarding into the heart of contextual youth work—protecting young people, empowering families, and enabling long-term financial safety and freedom. We can no longer afford to treat financial harm as a side issue. It is a frontline concern, and I am committed to transforming how we respond to it—one solution at a time.