Shanea, 19, is founder of Your Life More Life CIC and Youth Development Coordinator The 4Front project. In 2017, Shanea and her community lost one of their peers to serious youth violence. Shanea has also lost friends and family to the criminal justice system and has experienced other types of community violence. The following year, one of Shanea's peers was stabbed outside of her house and she directly supported a young person through this. Shanea's layers of experiences encouraged her to learn more about violence in her community and how she could drive change in the London borough of Newham. Shanea uses all of her lived experiences to inspire and empower her peers and the younger generation. She vowed to do everything possible to make sure that the young lives lost to violence are not in vain and she will make a change in her community to honour them. Shanea is on a mission to build peace in her community and the world, she reimagines a world founded on peace with new systems that allow freedom for all.
She embarked on a two-year journey of research, volunteering, bringing together the community and other plans. Whilst studying at St Bonaventures Sixth Form she delivered support to young boys in the behaviour and inclusion unit to support those that were facing permanent exclusion. She then went on to co-chair the Newham Youth Commission focusing on a multi-agency approach to youth violence and youth safety across the Borough. Shanea also organised first aid training for her cohort at St Bons which resulted in 300+ more students across the borough accessing the same training to respond to violent incidents in the community. After achieving amazing a-level results, Shanea completed the Social Ark CIO programme 2019-2020 as a young social entrepreneur from East London as she officially founded Your Life More Life - a youth-led organisation dedicated to supporting marginalised youth in Newham that are impacted by violence, injustice and exclusion. Shanea is building an organisation that seeks to ensure that some of the most vulnerable youth in her borough can access support services to heal and thrive. Shanea has also co-designed and delivered a powerful youth activism fellowship programme for youth at The 4Front Project and she voice community issues and solutions through her activism and social action. Shanea is an advocate for reimagining justice with a focus on healing, restorative and transformative justice to build peace.
At Your Life More Life, we are working to build a new system of community-based care in Newham that focuses on empowerment, healing and holistic support. This includes supporting young people via mentorship and support with housing, education, opportunities and advocacy. Your Life More Life services are youth-led and are being designed to meet the needs of youth that many label ‘hard to reach’ and to ensure that these young people are supported to heal and thrive. We deliver work in the local community, delivering outreach and 1:1 peer support work enabling them to co-design self and community care support plans. Our work is founded on building trusting relationships, creating safe spaces and exploring how we can best meet the needs of each individual. We are working to build our services to meet community needs and crises - reducing reliance on state responses and embedding restorative practices that centre reconciliation and repairing of harms.
