Thursday 23 July 2015

Young Citizen Award - Kashmire Hawker

The Wolverhampton Young Citizen Award looks to recognise exceptional contributions made by the City's Young people to our community. For the past 18 months competition finalist Kashmire Hawker has been a young leader with Changing Young Lives (CYL), a rights based organisation working with children, young people and adults to stand up for their rights and be seen as people first, irrespective of their disability.


Kashmire is an extremely passionate young man who wants to tell the world what young disabled people can achieve. He has led practice development sessions in Wolverhampton with a range of professionals across health, education and social care to improve services, challenge practice and raise their expectations of young disabled people. He has co-produced and co-delivered a national training programme around Special Education Needs & Disability (SEND) reforms - work which has helped to inform young disabled people nationwide about the new laws and how it affects them to enable them to take control of their own support and decisions about their lives.

Kashmire's goal is a career in politics and he has recently been re-elected as vice chair for the UK Youth Parliament (UKYP). Kashmire goes the extra mile in standing up for young disabled people, ensuring their voices are heard and he is working to create a fairer and more inclusive society in which himself and his peers can participate and belong.