Launch of the Youth Ambassador Project

We are officially launching the Youth Ambassador Project in Sussex!

Police & Crime Commissioner Katy Bourne has allocated funding to create a Youth Ambassador Project in Sussex made up of over 30 children and young people. 

The Youth Ambassador Project will be led by the Breck Foundation - a UK-wide charity established in 2014 in response to the death of 14-year-old Breck Bednar, who was groomed and murdered by someone he met online. The Foundation delivers life-saving, online harms awareness education to children across the UK. 

For this pioneering project, the Breck Foundation will create cohorts of Ambassadors aged 13-18 who receive training to deliver high-quality, peer-to-peer educational presentations on the signs of online grooming and exploitation using Breck’s story.

15 schools are taking part in the scheme across Sussex, primarily focusing on years 9 and 10. The project will also see an additional cohort of over-16’s at BHASVIC College acting as Senior Ambassadors. 

The aim of the project is to engage and empower young people to become inspirational speakers confident in the delivery of online safety to their peers, whilst highlighting the dangers of grooming, which has risen by 84% nationally in the last four years. 

Project Coordinator for Sussex, Giselle Wild, has already begun recruiting Ambassadors and visited BHASVIC this week to meet potential candidates for the over-16’s cohort. 

Once all Ambassadors have been recruited, they will undergo training in: public speaking; safeguarding, team-building and learning Brek’s story. The teams will begin their work from September 2025 onwards, and there is potential for the scheme to grow after this initial pilot stage. 

Learn more about the project here: Youth Ambassador Project Launch