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Social Impact
Ella-Grace Gregoire is a volunteer, community welfare worker, activist, and social entrepreneur based in Blackpool. Dedicated to creating equal opportunities for marginalised young people, she has spent years turning lived experience into frontline action and systems-level change. She has volunteered over 500 hours, organised 11 trips and residentials for young people, delivered 231 hours of mental health education, and run over 10 shows and events for her projects under the age of 25.
Alongside this grassroots work, she has dedicated more than 40 hours a week to Streetwise, the community welfare centre her family runs in Warton, Lancashire.
Her work has earned recognition at both a national and international level with awards. She is also the youngest person to secure a place on the AMR Leadership Programme 2026. Her work spans direct frontline support, community welfare, youth-led campaigning, and high-level advocacy, using her own experience to push for a mental health approach built on prevention, not crisis response.
Project Herizons
Herizons is a youth-led national programme based in Blackpool, supporting up to 12,000 girls in one of the UK's most underserved communities, and aiming to reach up to 4.2 million young people in education nationally. It is led by Ella-Grace Gregoire, who has run projects for young people and girls since the age of 17, impacting over 144,000 individuals, with over 500 hours of mentoring experience working directly with girls aged 8–19.
The mental health conversation has spent years telling young people "it's okay not to be okay." Herizons asks a different question: how do we help young people be okay in the first place? Ella-Grace's own experience shapes that mission ; diagnosed with severe OCD at 15, she was offered medication instantly without any foundational support. As she puts it:
"I was let down by the system at 15. We keep telling young people it's okay not to be okay, but we're not giving them the tools, education, or early support to cope. Girls are dying. We've lost girls as young as fourteen in our own network, and my mentees are grieving their best friends. This isn't a lack of awareness, it's a system that intervenes far too late."
Built on 15 years of research and piloting, Herizons shifts the focus from crisis response to genuine prevention giving girls a toolbox for life through group work, therapeutic sessions, a wellbeing syllabus, trips, and residentials. The syllabus is co-created with young people themselves, reflecting the real experiences of Gen Z and Gen Alpha, and designed as a scalable, practitioner-led model that can be replicated nationally. Herizons aims to influence systems, Working closely with schools, social workers, youth providers, NHS partners and big tech. Herizons bridges the gaps in the system, complementing clinical services while embedding preventative, relational support.
Ella-Grace has been recognised for this work as a 'Leader for Big Change', representing Gen Z in front of government ministers, UN delegates, NGOs, and activists on mental health, women's health, and equality. Part of that means getting decision-makers into the same room as the young girls of Blackpool, so their voices shape the policies that affect them. Our upcoming event at Blackpool Pleasure Beach will bring councils, headteachers, and decision-makers face-to-face with the girls to create a genuine bridge.
At its core, Herizons is about raw youth voice, not tokenism. It is building a future where being okay isn't the exception, but the starting point.
Click the link for more information.
The EGG School (2017 - 2023)
Ella-Grace founded EGG after seeing how few opportunities were available to young people from disadvantaged backgrounds to pursue performing arts, having grown up watching her mother work three jobs to support her in an industry still dominated by privately educated talent. EGG was created to close that gap, giving young people the chance to discover their talent through singing, dancing and acting, alongside dedicated support for their wellbeing, entirely without funding.
Operating as part of Streetwise Lancashire, EGG's services are fully subsidised to remove cost as a barrier. A full theatre school day, including all classes, costs just £7.50, building confidence, resilience, and self-esteem alongside teaching young people how their mind works and how to look after it. Families have described the impact as transformative: one parent said their child now knows more about mindfulness than they do, while another praised the team for genuinely caring, unlike past performing arts groups they'd tried.
The project was recognised with the Young Changemaker Award through Virgin, all achieved without any external funding behind it.
We now plan to open an EGG across the pond in the United States. We welcome philanthropists and sponsors who share our belief that every young person deserves the opportunity to explore their talent, regardless of their background, to get in touch.
