Social Action Campaigns (SAC)

The UpRising Social Action Campaign (SAC) is the core learning experience framing the UpRising Leadership Programme. Structured as a group project, they offer participants the chance to work with a team of peers to impact real change around an issue that is important to them. Through the project, UpRisers build lasting relationships with their cohort, strengthen connections to the local community, and establish a professional network of partnering organizations and experts in the field.

Current Social Action Campaigns

List and information about the current London SACs

List and information about the current Birmingham SACs

List and information about the current Bedford SACs

Past Social Action Projects

Election 2010

Although there was no clear winner in the 2010 election, one party undoubtedly lost: the British National Party suffered colossal setbacks across the country – including Barking and Dagenham, where the BNP was previously the second largest party.

Persistent anti-fascist campaigners – including members of the 2009/10 UpRising cohort – played a significant role in the Barking and Dagenham election, where all 12 BNP councillors surrendered their seats.  UpRiser Liam Baxter carried out a community campaign in the borough to promote political engagement and educate voters.  Baxter’s campaign featured an event with five of the borough’s parliamentary candidates who fielded questions from an audience of over 100 young voters.

You Press

You Press believes in the accurate representation of young people in the media and our mission is to work directly with the media to promote and explore the opinions of young people. In 2009 UpRising participants Le Ho, Farah Mohammoud, Shahin Ullah and Ola Akin worked on a campaign that aimed to tackle negative representations of young people in the media. In 2010, they established their project, You Press, as a social enterprise and secured funding for their campaign through the Big Challenge.

Khat Alert

Muna Hassan's vision for the campaign was to raise awareness to highlight the problems that the drug Khat causes within the Somali community. Khat is an addictive substance that has been linked time and again to negative health outcomes.

Muna first raised awareness of the effects of Khat. She then created an official campaign website called Khat Alert and a film to raise awareness. The UpRiser has had interest from a Somali channel called Universal, and the Islam Channel has also been supportive of the idea and have expressed interest in working with Muna in the future.