What happens when young people are given the tools, confidence and opportunities to make their voices heard?

And what if the problem isn't that young people aren't interested in democracy or social change, but that the systems and opportunities around them aren't designed to include them?

In this episode of The Spark Changemakers Podcast, Nikki travels virtually to Australia to meet Joelle Sassine and Afsana Kazi, two inspiring young changemakers working to ensure that young people, particularly those from underrepresented communities, have the opportunity to influence the decisions that affect their lives.

Joelle is an early-career academic, youth participation practitioner and creative civics facilitator working across research, civic engagement and community-based projects at Western Sydney University. Afsana is a research assistant with Using Our Voices at the Whitlam Institute, passionate about championing young people whose perspectives and experiences are too often overlooked.

Together, they explore the barriers that prevent young people from participating meaningfully in democracy, and how creativity, connection and practical opportunities can help overcome them.

Through their work on Using Our Voices, Joelle and Afsana are helping young people in Western Sydney understand how to engage with decision-makers, advocate for the issues that matter to them and turn everyday frustrations into opportunities for positive change.

But this conversation goes far beyond political participation. It's also about self-belief, identity, belonging and the power of supporting one another, and what happens when young people begin to realise that their voices really do matter.

In this conversation, you'll hear about:

🗣️ Why young people aren't necessarily disengaged from democracy – but often excluded from meaningful participation

🌍 How background, identity and structural inequalities can influence whose voices are heard and valued

🎨 Why creative, practical approaches to civic education can help young people turn their concerns into action

💡 The powerful 'aha moments' when young people realise they can genuinely influence decisions

🤝 Why connection, encouragement and collective support are so important in building confidence and self-belief

🌱 How empowering one young person can create a ripple effect throughout their community

👥 Why we need to move from 'me' to 'we' and recognise the power of collective changemaking

📱 The complexities of Australia's social media restrictions for under-16s – and why young people's perspectives need to be part of the conversation

Joelle and Afsana also share their own experiences of growing up in diverse communities in Western Sydney, where they witnessed the ways that young people's ideas and contributions could be overlooked because of their background or circumstances. Their experiences have shaped a shared commitment to creating opportunities where every young person can recognise their own worth, develop their confidence and feel empowered to contribute.

Connect with Joelle & Afsana

• Learn more about the Using Our Voices project through the Whitlam Institute at Western Sydney University: https://www.whitlam.org/civics-education
• Connect with Joelle Sassine on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joelle-sassine-207946218/
• Connect with Afsana Kazi on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/afsana-kazi-586a35350/

About The Spark Changemakers Podcast

The Spark Changemakers Podcast is for people who want to change the world, fuelled by passion and purpose. Through conversations with changemakers, thinkers and practitioners, we explore what it really takes to create meaningful change – in ourselves, our communities and the systems around us.

What if changing the world didn't have to start with a grand idea? What if sometimes it looked like putting the kettle on, sitting down on a sofa and having a conversation with another human being?

In this episode of The Spark Changemakers Podcast, Nikki talks to Maff Potts, founder of the Association of Camerados and author of Friends and Purpose: Stories from Sofas on Streets and Some Confounding Ideas for Tough Times, about the extraordinary power of ordinary human connection.

After spending 20 years working within traditional homelessness services and charities, Maff began to notice a pattern. The people who had friends, connection and a reason to get out of bed in the morning tended to do better.

Again and again, he saw that behind incredibly complex problems were people who were isolated, disconnected and often being treated as problems to be fixed rather than human beings who needed other human beings alongside them.

Eventually, that realisation became Camerados – a social movement that began in Maff's bedroom in 2015 and has since spread around the world. At the heart of the movement are Public Living Rooms: welcoming, no-agenda spaces where anyone can sit down, have a cuppa, chat, play a game or simply spend some time alongside other people.

Together, Nikki and Maff explore why something so simple can also be so profound – and what our institutions, services, schools and communities might learn from it.

In this conversation, you'll hear about:

☕ Why sometimes putting the kettle on can be more powerful than trying to fix someone's life

🛋️ How Public Living Rooms create spaces where people can simply be human

🤝 Why Camerados is built on mutuality and solidarity rather than charity

👥 Why we need more relationships somewhere between stranger and friend – people who may not know us deeply, but who nevertheless have our back

🌍 Why community might be one of the most important things we've forgotten in an increasingly individualised world

🌱 Why changemaking can be microscopic – and small interactions can create ripples far beyond what we ever see

✈️ How making just one degree of difference can eventually take us somewhere completely different

Connect with Maff & Camerados

• Find out more about Camerados and how to start a Public Living Room through the Association of Camerados: https://camerados.org
• Follow Camerardos on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/camerados_org/
• Connect with Maff on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maff-potts-4044b915/
• Buy the Friends and Purpose book: https://www.wallingfordbookshop.co.uk/product-page/friends-and-purpose-maff-potts

In this episode of The Spark Changemakers Podcast, Nikki talks to Rae Baker, founder of Think Team, about how we move beyond collaboration in theory and start putting it into practice.

Rae is an experienced coach, facilitator and consultant with more than a decade of experience in engagement, partnership working and collaboration across the public sector.

Having worked within local government, health and other public bodies in Wales, Rae founded Think Team to help organisations do the work they're already doing in more collaborative, integrated and human ways.

Together, Nikki and Rae explore why genuine partnership working is often much harder than it sounds. They explore why investing time in relationships at the beginning can create stronger partnerships in the long term, and why simply putting people in the same room and calling it partnership working isn't enough.

In this conversation, you'll hear about:

🤝 Why being around the same table doesn't automatically mean we're working in partnership

🧱 Why trust and relationships are the foundations of meaningful collaboration

💬 How to move beyond engagement as a series of standalone conversations towards ongoing relationships

👥 Why one person can never be expected to represent the views of an entire community

🌱 Moving from doing things to people, towards doing with and alongside them

🧠 Why public bodies need to recognise that they don't hold all the knowledge

🏛️ How Wales is creating the legislative conditions for more collaborative approaches to public service

🔄 Why collaboration requires a wider culture shift, not simply another engagement process

Connect with Rae

Visit the ThinkTeam Website: www.thinkteam.co.uk

Connect with Rae on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rae-baker/

Follow ThinkTeam on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/thinkteamltd/

About The Spark Changemakers Podcast

The Spark Changemakers Podcast is for people who want to change the world, fuelled by passion and purpose. Through conversations with changemakers, thinkers and practitioners, we explore what it really takes to create meaningful change – in ourselves, our communities and the systems around us.

What happens when you're brilliant at helping everyone else, but struggle to follow your own advice?

In this episode of The Spark Changemakers Podcast, Nikki talks to Robert Haines, Jungian coach, speaker and founder of Engineering Your Life, about the inner work that allows us to create change without losing ourselves in the process.

After a successful 37-year career in engineering, Robert experienced what he describes as a major life reset. A painful divorce led him into trauma therapy, recovery and a much deeper exploration of his own patterns, beliefs and inner world.

What began as a journey towards healing gradually became something more: a calling to help other people reconnect with their own wisdom and create lives that feel more intentional, balanced and aligned. Today, Robert specialises in helping helpers follow their own advice.

Together, Nikki and Robert explore why those of us who spend our lives supporting, leading or creating change for others can find it so difficult to turn that same care and wisdom towards ourselves.

They dive into self-awareness, perfectionism, failure, choice and intentionality, as well as Robert's Jungian approach to understanding the ego, shadow and unconscious patterns that can quietly run our lives.

In this conversation, you'll hear about:

🧭 Why helping others can sometimes become a way of avoiding ourselves

🪞 How other people can act as mirrors for our unconscious patterns and shadow

💡 Why self-awareness needs to be accompanied by self-acceptance

🏆 How perfectionism and fear of failure can stop us experimenting, learning and growing

🌱 Why learning how to fail well might be one of the greatest gifts we can give ourselves – and our children

❤️ Why helpers and changemakers need to prioritise their own wellbeing if they want their impact to be sustainable

Connect with Robert

• Visit Robert’s website: www.engineeringyourlife.net
• Connect with Robert on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robert-haines-a072334/
• Listen to Robert’s podcast on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@EYL_Robert_Haines
• Subscribe to Robert’s Substack: https://substack.com/@engineeringyourlife

About The Spark Changemakers Podcast

The Spark Changemakers Podcast is for people who want to change the world, fuelled by passion and purpose. Through conversations with changemakers, thinkers and practitioners, we explore what it really takes to create meaningful change – in ourselves, our communities and the systems around us.

In this episode of The Spark Changemakers Podcast, Nikki talks to Laura Burling, founder of Co-designed Solutions, an independent relational practice working alongside people, communities and organisations to create the conditions for meaningful change.

Drawing on more than 20 years of lived and learnt experience across health, education, local government, charities and communities, Laura explores why relationships aren't simply a "nice to have" in systems change – they are part of the essential infrastructure that allows change to happen.

Laura shares the deeply personal story behind her work, including the influence of her brother Glynn, who had Down’s syndrome and later developed Alzheimer's. His life and the relationships surrounding him at the end of it helped shape Laura's belief in the extraordinary power of human connection.

Together, Nikki and Laura explore what relational infrastructure actually looks like in practice: creating shared principles, translating those principles into behaviours, surfacing and sharing power, and crucially, learning how to repair relationships when things go wrong.

Drawing on Laura's work with lived experience and parent-carer forums, they discuss the difference between doing things to people and working with them, and why genuine co-design requires organisations to think differently about expertise, agency and participation.

And perhaps most importantly, they explore why meaningful change cannot always be rushed. As Laura puts it: “Things move at the pace of trust.”

In this conversation, you'll hear about:

✨ Why relationships are the “glitter and the glue” that hold change together

🏗️ What relational infrastructure really means and why it matters

🧩 The four foundations of Laura’s approach: principles, practice, power sharing and repair

🤝 Moving from “power over” to “power with” and “power to”

🗣️ Why lived experience needs to influence strategic decision-making

🐢 Why trust is built slowly — and can disappear incredibly quickly

🧭 How shared purpose can bring people back together when relationships become strained

About Laura Burling

Laura Burling is the founder of Co-designed Solutions, an independent relational practice working alongside people, communities and organisations to co-create the conditions for meaningful change.

Her work focuses on relationships, participation, power sharing, collective learning and helping organisations move beyond consultation towards genuine co-design. Laura also writes regularly about relational practice, co-design, participation and more human approaches to public services.

Connect with Laura

Website: https://co-designedsolutions.co.uk/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laura-burling-921534304/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/co_designed_solutions

About The Spark Changemakers Podcast

The Spark Changemakers Podcast is for people who want to change the world, fuelled by passion and purpose. Through conversations with changemakers, thinkers and practitioners, we explore what it really takes to create meaningful change – in ourselves, our communities and the systems around us.

What if, when a child is overwhelmed, we stopped asking them to do something to calm down and instead changed what was happening around them?

In this episode of The Spark Changemakers Podcast, Nikki Giant talks to Nicola Maria Rose, founder of HushAway®, a Sound Sanctuary created specifically for sensitive and neurodivergent children.

Drawing on her experience as a nursery owner, neurodivergent-inclusive coach, ADHD coach and sound therapy practitioner, Nikki explains why so many traditional approaches to emotional regulation can fall short at precisely the moment children need them most. When a child is already overwhelmed, instructions such as “take a deep breath”, “calm down” or “use your calm corner” can simply become another demand.

HushAway takes a different approach. Using gentle storytelling, predictable sensory cues, ASMR-inspired soundscapes, binaural beats and carefully designed audio experiences, it aims to give children a low-demand sensory anchor, without requiring them to follow instructions or even pay attention.

In this conversation Nikki and Nicola explore:

⚡The importance of predictability and rhythm for neurodivergent nervous systems

⚡Why choice and agency matter

⚡The potential of sound to support children through transitions, sleep and sensory overwhelm

⚡Why emotional regulation needs to be taken far more seriously within education.

They also discuss HushAway's SoundSonic® ambassadors around the world, the research being undertaken with schools and universities, and the HushAway® Quiet Zone at Fearne Cotton's Happy Place Festival.

At the heart of the conversation is a deceptively simple idea: regulate the child first, and then learning, connection and participation become possible.

Find out more

➡️Explore HushAway® and try the Sound Sanctuary free for 14 days, with no card details required: www.hushaway.com

➡️Follow Nicola Maria Rose (Nikki) on LinkedIn for her latest thinking, research and updates on HushAway®: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicola-maria-rose/

➡️Follow HushAway® across Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Facebook and LinkedIn: https://linktr.ee/hushaway

After 30 years as an NHS consultant psychiatrist, Dr Rosie Oretti was approaching retirement when a volunteering shift at a homelessness café sparked an unexpected question: what happens to all those used coffee grounds?

That question eventually became Grounds for Good — a multi award winning circular economy business transforming waste coffee grounds into premium spirits, while supporting people affected by homelessness.

In this episode, Nikki talks to Rosie about starting again at 59, moving from a career in which she was an expert into a world where she had to learn almost everything from scratch, and discovering that purpose doesn’t have an age limit.

Together they explore creativity, resilience and the realities of entrepreneurship; why changemakers need to learn to ask for help; and how our previous experiences can find completely new expression in the next chapter of our lives.

Rosie also reflects on what 30 years working in psychiatry taught her about hope, human potential and the importance of believing that change is always possible.

In this episode:

• Why it’s never too late to begin again
• How coffee waste became an award-winning purpose-led business
• Creating environmental and social impact through entrepreneurship
• Learning, adapting and moving forward without waiting for perfection
• Navigating self-doubt and asking for help
• Why small steps can create meaningful change

A conversation about reinvention, purpose and the unexpected places where changemaking can begin.

Connect with Rosie and learn more:

⚡Visit the Grounds for Good website

⚡Connect with Rosie on LinkedIn

⚡Follow Grounds for Good on Instagram and Facebook

Welcome to the Spark Changemakers Podcast - we're back for season four with more incredible changemakers who are putting their Spark into action.

Hosted by Nikki Giant, this podcast is dedicated to helping people discover their inner spark – the passion, joy, and purpose that drives them to make a difference in the world. Whether you’re already a changemaker or just starting to explore how you can create a positive impact, this podcast is for you.

In this trailer, Nikki shares what you can expect from season four. New episodes will drop every Friday at 8am GMT and you'll hear inspiring stories from changemakers around the globe who are making an impact in their communities and beyond. The focus will be on themes of passion, purpose, and creating a legacy of positive change for future generations.

In this season, guests will include:

• Dr Rosie Oretti, NHS consultant turned social entrepreneur who is turning waste coffee grounds into premium spirits, creating a meaningful environmental and social impact through Grounds for Good
• Maff Potts, author of Friends and Purpose and founder of global movement Camerados who shares his mission to create public living rooms in towns and cities to tackle loneliness, isolation and create community
• Nicola Maria Rose, founder of Hushaway, who creates healing frequencies and meditations designed especially for neurodivergent children
• Robert Haines, engineer turned coach who shares his experience of turning trauma into healing and helping others to engineer their life...plus many more inspiring changemakers.

Join Nikki and a community of 'ordinary extraordinary' individuals who are ready to spark change and leave a lasting impact on the world.

Subscribe Now!

Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast so you never miss an episode, and share it with others who are passionate about creating change. Learn more at TheSparkMovement.org