NEWS

The winner of the second England and Wales Young Thinker of the Year 2022 titles has been announced. Femi Laryea-Adekimi won the award in Lancaster in October with his humane paper which powerfully and persuasively advocated for education to be accessible to all prisoners. Femi, representing the Prison Reform Trust, was described as an engaging presenter of a well-argued, compassionate, empathetic paper. His 90 Second Challenge – Is Spider-Man more of a hero than Superman? – 'deftly unravelled the motives of both super-heroes with panache and humour'. Cara Devlin (Virgin Money) was runner-up, a delegate from the Civil Service was highly commended, and Harry Roberts (Health Education England) was commended. The award for best 90 Second Challenge went to Genevieve Poku, ActionAid UK, with the question: 'Who decided kissing was a good idea?' Click here for photos.

Looking ahead, 2023 opens with two simultaneous events at the end of January – the Young Ireland Programme (Click here for brochure and booking form) and the Young Scotland and Northern Ireland Programme (Click here for brochure and booking form). These will be followed in early March by that annual, exciting gathering of teams from local authorities across the UK for the Young Local Authority of the Year (Click here for brochure and booking form).