Change Activist

Carmel McConnell MBE believes you are more in control than you think. With her lifetime of experience using the ideas from successful social activism to create change in the business community and in the world of charity, she makes the case for change activism as a mindset to improve your life and get better at action, to find and fulfil your potential with each baby step.

Change Activist describes how to navigate the ups and downs of making change happen; from start up to scale up, to winning backers and allies. Through interviews with global change leaders including Big Issue co-Founder Lord John Bird, Kenyan education leader Qabale Duba and Indian vaccination activist Varsha Vanugobal, this new edition practically unpacks the elements of successful change activists to show that we are all capable of more, if we take action.

The only way to do it, is to do it.

Auteur

While researching her first book Change Activist, in 2000, Carmel interviewed five headteachers in the London borough of Hackney who told her that many of their pupils arrived at school too hungry or malnourished to learn. Carmel started buying and delivering breakfast food to these schools, with remarkable results as children's concentration, behaviour, punctuality and educational attainment significantly improved. As demand for her help grew, Carmel took time out from her City technology consultancy, setting up Magic Breakfast in 2003.

Today, Magic Breakfast and the National School Breakfast Programme (DfE funded to March 2021) provides healthy breakfasts to around 400,000 children in England and Scotland during term time. Carmel was awarded an MBE for her services to school food in the New Year's Honours 2016. In 2018 she received an Honorary Doctorate from the Open University for improving access to education. She became the 2018 Woman of the Year Campaigner Category at a ceremony in July 2018. Carmel still works full time on Magic Breakfast as well as media work, speaking, writing and faffing around on social media.