Sara Alao -  Home Farm Project

Sara's an aerospace engineer who asked a simple question: why do vertical farms need electricity and plumbing? The Home Farm Project is her answer. A modular solar-powered farm that fits any space, uses a rotating motor to catch light, and costs nothing to run. This year she's launching ten pilots across real households, proving fresh food access doesn't have to be a poverty problem.

Pim Sullivan Tailyour – Glitch

Cities have overlooked land everywhere, yet many people, especially renters and young people, don't know where they can grow or how to start. Glitch is a playful nature-tech platform that turns your phone into a free entry point to urban growing. An interactive map discovers spaces, conversational AI guides you through growing, AR imagines what grey spaces could become, and citizen science logs biodiversity. Rather than keeping people on screens, Glitch leads them outside to reconnect with soil, food and neighbours.

Anna Winter – Auralytica

Food waste isn't inevitable, it's an information problem. Anna built Auralytica, an in-pack sensing material that detects the actual chemistry of spoilage, replacing guessed use-by dates with pack-level data. No electronics, no app, no language barrier, just a colour change readable by anyone. Born from Cambridge and Imperial research, it serves farmers, food banks and families with one honest signal. It will unlock a $540B opportunity in food value chain while cutting emissions driving global waste.

Jedidah Ajala - Strides

Jedidah built Strides because navigation apps ignore safety. This AI-powered navigation app routes you along safer, better-lit streets instead of the fastest path, using community safety data and machine learning. Designed for women and gender minorities first, Strides puts equitable access to safe movement in everyone's hands, transforming how people navigate cities, starting with Edinburgh.

Kate Alderson – Freeater Ltd

Kate watched her family spend hours checking menus and labels before eating out. Freeater solves that. This personalised food confidence platform brings venue discovery, community knowledge and shopping together in one place, helping people with allergies, coeliac disease and dietary needs find places and products that work for them. Rather than fragmented information, Freeater personalises it. Since launching in May 2026, it's grown to over 1,000 users.

Kaia Allen-Bevan – YouthTheGap CIC

Most anti-racism training in schools is a single CPD day that changes nothing. Kaia's approach is different. YouthTheGap is a youth-led, Black feminist-led education consultancy working inside schools to close the UK's growing educational inequality gap. Instead of one-off sessions, it co-designs multi-year Remediation Audits, benchmarking racial equity, reviewing curriculum, training staff and students, and building action plans the school community owns. Young people lead the work as Anti-Racist Changemakers. Since incorporating in November 2024, it's reached 3,400+ young people.

Lily Mott - Strides

Young people's stories are being told by everyone except young people themselves. Media Network is a youth-led community of emerging creators using storytelling and digital media as tools for real impact. What started as a podcast after a protest in Washington, DC has grown into a thriving ecosystem: 40+ creators producing 27 podcasts and seven blogs reaching 100,000+ downloads worldwide.

Kemi Fadahunsi – The Mend

Sewing was once a basic life skill. We lost it. The Mend combines hands-on workshops with a digital learning community to teach circular fashion skills: repair, customize, repurpose. The innovation: a membership model where beginners become contributors, feeding their own patterns and tips back into the platform. Already The Mend has reached over 70 workshop attendees, built a community of 200+ and diverted more than 20kg of textiles from landfill.

Yusuf Ben-Tarifite – AVA

Talent is everywhere. Opportunity is not. Yusuf lived this problem, applying to medical school from a state school with no playbook. AVA writes down the unwritten curriculum of university admissions as an AI platform, personalised for every student across 14 subjects. It guides them through the whole cycle like an obstacle course they master before the real interview. AVA has already doubled students' chances of Oxbridge entry, and achieved a 92% medicine acceptance rate against the 22% national average.

OLUFERANMI BALOGUN -  Room Too, Social Justice and Inclusion/People’s Choice Winner 

Room Too is a youth-led social enterprise  transforming underused into welcoming environments for study, connection and creativity.

YASMINE ABDU – CarbonTrac, Climate and Sustainability Winner 

CarbonTrac is an AI platform gamifying sustainable grocery shopping to make low-carbon living simple, rewarding, and accessible to everyone.

ROXANNE STEVENSON-BROWN – Find Care Compare, Health and Wellbeing Winner 

Find Care Compare - the UK’s only one-stop solution for finding and comparing both NHS and private healthcare services.

OLUWATOSIN TOBA – Tech Academia Education, Skills and Training Winner 

Tech Academia, an educational technology platform equipping students with industry-specific technical & soft skills and connecting them with employers to launch successful careers.

Sri Hollema -  Mat Zero, Climate and Sustainability/People’s Choice Winner 

Mat Zero provides heated mats that are designed to provide life-saving warmth, while also offering energy-efficient comfort for everyday use.

Gregory Hargraves – Paige Braille, Education, Skills and Training Winner 

Paige Braille replaces a braille writer's base board, translating key presses via an app, fostering collaboration with sighted peers, parents, and teachers.

Alaya Holloway – FirstGens,  Social Justice and Inclusion Winner 

FirstGens, a not-for-profit, supports first-generation university students, aiming to close national completion and graduate destination gaps for those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds.

Katie Hodgetts – The Resilience Project, Climate and Sustainability Winner 

The Resilience Project is a youth-led organization empowering young climate activists by providing mental health support and leadership training to combat climate anxiety and burnout.

Sara Berkai – Ambessa Play, Education, Skills and Training/People's Choice Winner 

Ambessa Play is a social enterprise offering DIY STEM kits for children, operating on a one-for-one model: for each kit purchased, one is donated to a displaced child lacking access to education.

Zak Marks – Kitt Medical, Social Justice and Inclusion Winner 

Kitt Medical provides wall-mounted Anaphylaxis Kitts containing emergency adrenaline pens, accompanied by CPD-accredited online training, to schools and qualifying businesses across the UK.