Mike Wamaya teaches dance in Kenya’s Kibera and Mathare slums by combining arts with social skills. He was a Top 10 Finalist for the Varkey Foundation Global Teacher Prize for his unique and extraordinary approach to empowering slum children through ballet. Mike is the founder of Project Elimu; a non-profit organisation championing quality education for children living in informal settlements by providing extra-curricular activities, demonstrating the importance of arts inclusion to standardised curriculum, and equipping teachers with tools to develop and incorporate 21st-Century skills in classrooms. Being able to dance gives children he works with confidence, helps raise their aspirations, and increases motivation for school. For those who have different skills the organisation is extending extra-curricular activities to include other arts, creative writing, theatre, voice, music poetry stagecraft and production. Due to Mike’s dedication and work many of his students have performed at the Kenyan National Ballet and received scholarships to train in America and UK. Mike tweets at @mikewamaya.

Georgia Batchelor Robbins, a final year Primary Education student at Edge Hill University, is a strong believer in educational rights for all. Georgia has dedicated her free time to helping young people in the UK and abroad. As part of her National Citizen Service, she worked with people with Down’s syndrome during a group campaign, ‘Up Syndrome’, and was elected to the North Birmingham Youth Board where she helped organised a ‘Sleep Out’ to raise awareness for homelessness. As a keen dancer, Georgia set up a project to collect dance clothes for Mike’s dancers in Kibera after seeing an article online. After visiting Kibera in 2017 and building a relationship with Mike, Georgia became the UK Ambassador for Project Elimu. Since then, Georgia has been awarded a scholarship from her university, recognising her dedication to volunteering which has allowed her to visit Kibera for a third time, where she has assisted Mike teaching dance and taught art and English lessons. During her most recent trip in 2018, Georgia brought collected children’s books where the protagonists reflected the children and the African culture in order to develop a reading for pleasure scheme at Project Elimu’s centre. Georgia has continued to support Project Elimu during the current Covid-19 circumstances and is hoping to return to Kibera once the pandemic is over. Georgia tweets at @MissGBRobbins.