Abrahim Simmonds is the Co-founder of the Jamaican Youth Empowerment through Culture, Arts and Nationalism (JAYECAN) a 2017 Queen’s Young Leader.

Under Abrahim’s leadership, JAYECAN helps young people to identify a skill or talent that they can use to help the community and creates programmes which use the arts to drive positive changes.

In one such programme, ArtReach, volunteers visit children homes and rehabilitation centres to provide music, art and drama sessions. Another, HerStory, encourages young women from disadvantaged communities to use the spoken word and writing to help them to explore their past. 

He has contributed his experience of using art and creativity in advocacy and changemaking to a series of articles on Leading Change: 

• Using art to lead change
• When art meets activism
• The challenges of making change through art
• and Using art to take ideas forward.

Abrahim was a Project Officer for Jamaica Youth Advocacy Network. Now, he serves as the Project Officer for Linkages for FHI360, a subsidiary of USAID and PEPFAR.

Abrahim has a bachelors in Social Work from the University of the West Indies, Mona, where he is currently studying for his masters in Sociology.