PODCAST TRANSCRIPT

Hi, my name’s Luke Lancaster. I’m aged 16, and the founder and CEO of Young Pioneers, the charity that I founded to help young people overcome adversity and lead change.

For me, 2012 will be a key year. We’re hoping to scale up our big project, Be Healthy, and roll it out nationally to support young people across the UK. And at the same time we’ll be focussing on our Social Investment and Franchise Scheme for young people to help them start their own business.

It will be a challenging year. The economy is not good for young people, and more and more young people are living in poverty, and this year will be challenging for them.

But we can make a difference, we can deliver skill-based programmes that will help these young people become self-sufficient and help them become successful in life.

I hope 2012 will be a year when we can encourage more young people to be healthy and work with us to set up and run our big Be Healthy programme in their area, and earn income from doing that.

My aspirations are to equip young people, not only with the skills to be healthy, but also the skills to earn a living and be successful. I predict that by the end 2012, we will have worked with over 2000 young people, teaching them to be healthy, showing everyone that it’s cool to care.