The CEO of Lewis Hamilton’s Mission 44 initiative has outlined the next steps the charity established by the seven-time Formula 1 world champion will take over the coming year.
AUTHORAlex KalinauckasPUBLISHEDAPR 29, 2023, 7:09 PM1
Hamilton created Mission 44, which has aims to improve diversity in F1 and the wider motorsport world, in 2021 in the aftermath of the Black Lives Matter protests witnessed across the world in 2020 – investing £20m of his own money at that stage.
Mission 44 is aimed at improving education and opportunities overall for black students in the UK, as well as improving diversity and representation generally across motorsport and STEM industries for underserved groups in society.
It is also supported by Hamilton’s Mercedes squad, UK broadcaster Sky and Swiss bank UBS, with Hamilton ultimately hoping it will expand to help people around the globe as opposed to its current set-up providing funding to organisations in his home country.
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Mission 44 CEO Jason Arthur has now set out the key aims the charity will focus on for the coming 12 months, after growing from having “one grantee”, per Arthur’s latest blog post on Mission 44’s website, to it now supporting “23 brilliant organisations based across the country”.
Arthur, writing to provide an update at the start of the new financial term, states that this year Mission 44 will be dedicated to concentrating “further into our value of ‘Bravery’” as “our partners, young people and funders have consistently encouraged us to be bold and disruptive in our approach to grant-making, communications and advocacy”.
The charity will therefore be “engaging in participatory grant-making with our newly recruited Youth Advisory Board [and] empowering its members to shape and take decisions across our strategy”.
Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes F1 W14
PHOTO BY: ZAK MAUGER / MOTORSPORT IMAGES
Arthur continued: “[We will be] launching an innovation fund to support new models that reimagine the purpose and delivery of education, launching two new fellowships – one within education and one within youth activism – to invest in emerging leaders from diverse backgrounds who can drive systemic change.
“[And] significantly scaling our campaign and storytelling – particularly in relation to preventing school exclusions and inspiring young people to explore opportunities in STEM and motorsport.”
Mission 44 is set to provide further strategy information in the upcoming middle phase of 2023.
It recently appointed two new board members – AKQA design company founder Ajaz Ahmed and Anne Mensah, vice president of content at Netflix UK.
Its latest grant was providing £125,000 to support the Power the Fight initiative aimed at ending youth violence in London “with the delivery and development of its Therapeutic Intervention for Peace Programme (TIP) in three secondary schools in South East London” – per information provided by Mission 44 in collaboration with the 360Giving open data platform.
Mission 44’s largest grant so far is £540,000 provided to Teach First, which was also its first grant and awarded back in June 2021.