Champions 2029 - The Pillars
Six pillars, one Coin
Three pillars earn. Three pillars reach. The Coin sits between them.
The Coin is the hinge. What the movement earns on the left pays for what it reaches on the right — and the reach, in time, creates the supporters, clients and alumni who fund the next round.
Pillar One: Champions Pathway for Young People
Connecting talent to opportunity.
The Pathway is the mission. Every other pillar exists to reach it, fund it, or carry it further. Nothing here has been delivered at scale yet — this is the proposed shape, set out for discussion.
Why this mattersEmployers cannot see trustworthiness, so they rely on proxies: the school, the network, the postcode, a name they recognise. Talent without those proxies goes unseen.
The Pathway seeks to transform youth development by establishing a ‘fitness for opportunity’ measure based on trustworthiness — connecting young people directly with employers, through a self-funding and self-scaling model.
It draws on time-served models — among them the boys’ and girls’ clubs movement that began in Britain in the mid-nineteenth century and grew into the National Association of Boys and Girls Clubs — and uses technology to adapt that idea for the modern age.
What it is
A structured programme, ending in something that can be shown.
The Champions Pathway is a structured programme that supports young people into employability by focusing on trust — building the attributes that make someone worth backing, and then evidencing them.
What a young person earns at the end is the Digital Humanity Badge: a verifiable token of ‘fitness for opportunity’, held by them and recognised by employers.
One place would be funded by one Humanity Trust Coin.
How it works
Four steps, and the fourth is what makes it a movement.
- Delivered in cohorts, to a published standard, so the Badge means the same thing wherever it is earned.
- Humanity-centred leadership, enabling young people to develop strong and resilient adult lives.
- From 2029, delivered mainly through partner networks under licence — Champions would train the trainers rather than run every cohort.
The standard is the assetA Badge is worth exactly what the standard behind it is worth. Guarding that standard is the organisation’s first job — before growth, and ahead of any volume target.
How it would be funded
The Coin starts it. Pay-it-forward and the other pillars repay it.
The Humanity Trust Coin would provide the starting capital, funding places for young people — repaid over time through pay-it-forward, and from surpluses generated by the other pillars.
The Pathway carries no revenue of its own. That is deliberate: the young person is not the customer.
Years one and two would further develop and prove the model — the standard, the delivery, the evidence that the Badge is recognised — ahead of scaling in year three. The step to 10,000 is deliberate, and it comes after the learning, not instead of it.
Builds on
Fifty years of human development.
- UK National Holocaust Centre & Museum — an independent, self-funded institution reaching over 20,000 British schoolchildren each year.
- Kigali Genocide Memorial — its peace and values education programme reaches 2.5 million Rwandan children each year, mainstreamed within the Rwandan education system.
- Champions in the United States — a recent pilot programme with college students, alongside work with healthcare professionals in Chicago.
The opportunity
Prove it where it is hardest.
The Champions Pathway for Young People has the potential to transform youth development — creating a self-funding and self-scaling model that bridges talent and opportunity.
Fully tested in post-genocide Rwanda, it would be ready to be applied elsewhere.
A young person cannot prove they can be trusted.
Not until someone gives them the chance to.
For more information contact Glen Ford at glen@35champions.com
This page is a draft concept note prepared for discussion. The figures are outline estimates rather than projections, and delivery volumes depend on partnerships not yet in place.
Pillar Two: Champions Professionals for Organisations
Humanity as a performance multiplier.
This is the engine. It would earn more than it costs, and the difference is what funds young people. Nothing here has been contracted beyond the work already delivered — this is the proposed shape, set out for discussion.
Why this mattersOrganisations spend heavily on leadership and lose people anyway — to burnout, to disengagement, to a quiet withdrawal of discretionary effort. The variable almost no programme addresses directly is trust.
Champions Professionals treats humanity as the performance multiplier — unlocking hidden value in organisations, and generating the surplus that funds young people.
It is the same content, and the same premise, that the Champions Pathway offers a sixteen-year-old. Here it is sold to people who can afford to pay for it.
What it is
Fee-based programmes, priced per organisation.
Champions Professionals delivers fee-based programmes to companies and associations — working with senior leadership and with cohorts inside the organisation.
It is priced per company rather than per head, because what a client is buying is a change in how the organisation works, not a number of seats in a room.
From 2029 the model shifts towards association licences: associations deliver to their own members, so reach grows without the centre growing with it.
How it works
Four steps, and the fourth is what pays for the Pathway.
- Champions Circles for Professionals: Calling Forward Humanity.
- Senior leadership focus — unlocking hidden value through humanity-centred leadership.
- Tackling the inhumanity of burnout.
Priced per organisation, not per headA client is not buying training places. They are buying a change in how the organisation works — which is also why the engagement reaches leadership rather than stopping at a cohort.
How it would be funded
Self-funding and surplus-generating from the start.
Champions Professionals would pay for itself from the first year and generate surplus beyond it, at around a 70% gross margin. That surplus is what cross-subsidises the Champions Pathway and builds the Coin Reserve.
2027 would be priced deliberately as a taster year, moving to full price in 2028 on the strength of a first cohort and a set of references.
The corporate line would be held flat in 2029 on purpose. It requires senior people capable of leading an organisational transformation, and those cannot be hired to a commemoration timetable. Choosing what not to grow is the discipline that protects everything else.
Case study: Chicago
One client. One year. Ninety days to change a culture.
Champions Professionals is not a proposal drawn on paper. It was delivered in the United States with Union Health Service in Chicago — a non-profit clinic founded in 1955, with around 250 staff serving some 40,000 members across six sites.
The approach worked from the inside out: emotional regulation, then trust, then collaboration, then performance. An independent case study, conducted through October 2025, found:
- Around 85% reported reduced emotional reactivity — the change staff felt first, and the one the rest depends on.
- Staff were given practical tools they could use in the moment — grounding, pausing, reframing — and a shared language: turn the dial down, slow yourself before you respond, the ripple effect.
- Percentages are of staff interviewed for the case study, not of all 250.
Chicago is why the corporate line is priced per organisation rather than per head. What the client bought was the transformation. The twenty-five places were how it was delivered — and around 250 people felt it.
The opportunity
Transforming professional leadership by centring it on what makes us human.
Healthcare is the immediate opportunity: care for the carers, countering burnout, and transforming professional leadership — and the world of work more generally.
The people who hold everyone else together are the ones least looked after. Burnout is not a wellbeing problem, it is a leadership one — and it is expensive, in turnover, in error, and in the quality of care a patient actually receives.
Beyond healthcare, the same argument holds wherever people work under pressure with other people’s outcomes in their hands.
Associations have the networks. Licensing lets the movement reach their members without building an organisation to match.
It is the difference between a large organisation delivering everywhere, and a light centre holding a standard that many organisations deliver to.
Humanity is not the soft part of the work.
It is the multiplier.
For more information contact Glen Ford at glen@35champions.com
This page is a draft concept note prepared for discussion. The figures are outline estimates rather than projections.
Pillar Three: Champions Circles for Peer Mentoring
The multiplier — why we call them Champions.
A Champion is not someone who completed a programme. A Champion is someone who then brings others with them. This is the pillar that turns a programme into a movement.
Why this mattersReach normally costs money: more places, more staff, more delivery. Peer mentoring is the exception — and young people are more readily changed by someone they already know than by an institution they have never heard of.
Champions Circles turn each young person who has been through the Pathway into someone who brings ten more with them.
It is the cheapest thing the movement would do, and the reason scale is possible at all.
What it is
Youth Champions, mentoring the people around them.
Having earned their Badge, a young person is invited to become a Youth Champion — convening and mentoring friends, peers and colleagues.
They are not left to do it alone. Each Champion is supported by a network of mentors and by structured online content, so what they pass on is the programme rather than an approximation of it.
And it counts: running a Circle builds their own Humanity Badge credentials. The person doing the mentoring is developing too.
How it works
One brings ten. Some of the ten bring ten more.
- Youth Champions invited to mentor friends and colleagues.
- Supported by a network of mentors.
- Providing access to online content.
- Youth Champions build their Humanity Badge credentials.
Once, not annuallyA Champion convenes a Circle once. Any model that assumes each Champion repeats every year compounds into numbers larger than the population — which is a modelling error, not a plan.
How it would be funded
Almost free, once the resources exist.
Humanity Trust Coin funding would provide the online resources — the structured content, the platform and the credentialing that a Champion draws on.
Beyond that, the cost is close to nil. The Champions are already trained, and the Circles are their own. Reach grows without cost growing with it.
This pillar carries no revenue line of its own. Its contribution is leverage rather than income — and leverage is what the whole plan rests on.
Builds on
Peer models that already work.
- The boys’ and girls’ clubs movement — autonomous local groups under a common ethos, with a light centre, since the mid-nineteenth century.
- Peace and values education at the Kigali Genocide Memorial, where young Rwandans already carry the teaching to their own communities.
- The Champions pilot with US college students, testing peer-led delivery directly.
The opportunity
This is where scale comes from.
Every other pillar costs more as it grows. This one does not — which is what makes reaching a million a plan rather than an aspiration.
It also changes what a Badge means. It is not a certificate of completion. It is the beginning of an obligation.
A programme reaches the people it can pay for.
A movement reaches the people they know.
For more information contact Glen Ford at glen@35champions.com
This page is a draft concept note prepared for discussion. The figures are outline estimates rather than projections.
Pillar Four: Champions Academy for Students and Alumni
Leveraging scale through established networks.
The Academy is how the movement grows through other people’s institutions rather than by building its own. No chapters are yet established — this is the proposed shape, set out for discussion.
Why this mattersBuilding an organisation big enough to reach students everywhere would take decades and swallow the money. Universities and museums are already there — with the buildings, the students, the credibility and the convening power.
The Academy leverages scale through established networks: chapters hosted by partner institutions, taught by those who came through the Pathway.
It is the Order of the Visitation model rather than the large-organisation model — autonomous houses under a common rule, with a light centre.
What it is
Paid membership, and chapters in partnership.
Champions Academy is a paid membership body for students and alumni, with university and museum chapters established in partnership with the host institution.
Members gain access to structured online courses and to in-person Champions Circles — the same content the Pathway teaches, at a level suited to students and graduates.
Chapters are taught in significant part by alumni who came through the Pathway themselves, which is what keeps the teaching credible and the cost low.
How it works
Partner, establish, grow, and hand over.
- Paid membership.
- University and museum chapters, in partnership.
- Access to online, structured courses and in-person Champions Circles.
The centre stays lightThe point of a chapter is that it is run by the institution that hosts it, not by Champions. What the centre holds is the standard, the content and the credential — not the payroll.
How it would be funded
Membership and sponsorship, moving to licence.
The Academy would be self-funded from membership and sponsorship from the first year — small at first, then meaningful as chapters establish.
Over time it moves to a licence model, in which each chapter becomes self-sustaining and the centre earns from the licence rather than from delivery.
Years one and two would establish the content, the standard and the first partnerships. Chapters are signed the year before they open, not the year they are needed.
Builds on
Existing networks of international universities, museums and youth organisations.
- An international network of Holocaust and Civil Rights museums.
- Established links with universities, built over twenty years.
- World Youth Clubs and Y20 — global youth movements.
The opportunity
Leveraging existing educational infrastructure globally.
Chapters with leading universities and memorial institutions would give the Badge academic standing that no amount of marketing could buy.
And because each chapter carries the same standard, the Badge means the same thing in every one of them.
Not buildings. Not headcount.
Developing a global network for humanity-centred leadership.
For more information contact Glen Ford at glen@35champions.com
This page is a draft concept note prepared for discussion. The figures are outline estimates rather than projections.
Pillar Five: Champions Badges for Supporters
Calling forward the message of humanity.
The badge is how someone who will never attend a programme still belongs to the movement — and how Rwanda’s survivors receive a permanent income rather than a one-off gift.
Why this mattersMost funds for survivors are raised once, spent, and then raised again. An annual income stream is a different kind of promise — the poppy raises money every November because the act is repeated, not because the appeal was large.
Champions Badges call forward the message of humanity, and provide an important income stream to support healing for survivors and Champions programmes for young people.
Designed in Rwanda, produced at the scale and cost the volumes require, and building on a badge line that already works.
What it is
A small object, worn, that pays for something permanent.
A Champions Badge is bought and worn by supporters. It is the movement’s public face — visible, inexpensive, and open to anyone.
Its surplus does two jobs: it helps fund Champions programmes for young people, and it pays into the Champions Fund for Rwandan survivors.
That second share would be constitutional rather than discretionary — written into how the movement is constituted, so it cannot quietly be reduced in a difficult year.
How it works
Made, sold, and split.
- Builds on the success of the Humanity Badges introduced at the Kigali Genocide Memorial in 2019 — now generating $150,000 a year at an 80% margin.
- Develop the badges for wider engagement beyond the Memorial, and internationally.
- Develop a special commemorative badge for Rwanda 2029.
The poppy modelThis is an annual income stream, not a lump sum. What matters is that it repeats — every year, at the commemoration, indefinitely — rather than that any single year is large.
How it would be funded
Pays back after year one, then generates surplus.
The badge line would carry a set-up cost in the first year — design, inventory, channels — and pay that back within it. Thereafter it generates annual surpluses.
It is the one pillar starting from a proven base rather than from nothing: the Memorial line has been running since 2019.
The 2029 figure is the one to challenge. It is many times the proven Kigali volume, and it assumes international channels that do not yet exist and would need building in 2027 and 2028.
Builds on
A line that already earns.
- The Humanity Badges at the Kigali Genocide Memorial, introduced in 2019 and now generating $150,000 a year at an 80% margin.
- Visitor income at the Memorial, developed from $200,000 a year to $1.5 million a year from 2016.
- Candles for Rwanda, the commemorative campaign created by Aegis and the Memorial for the fifteenth commemoration in 2009.
The opportunity
A global brand centred on humanity, establishing a fund for survivors.
A badge sold every year, forever, is a promise to survivors that does not depend on anyone remembering to make an appeal.
The healed become the healers. The fund is not charity received; it is what the movement owes to the place that taught it.
A badge is a small thing to wear.
It is not a small thing to fund.
For more information contact Glen Ford at glen@35champions.com
This page is a draft concept note prepared for discussion. The figures are outline estimates rather than projections.
Pillar Six: Be a Champion — Engage 100 Million Young People by 2030
Share a story of humanity.
A public campaign, launching at the thirty-fifth commemoration. This pillar depends on relationships rather than budget, and nothing else in the plan relies on it happening.
Why this mattersThe first five pillars reach the people the movement can deliver to. This one reaches everybody else — and it asks almost nothing of them: ten minutes, and someone to share it with.
One million people take part. One hundred million are reached. In 1994, around one million people were murdered in 100 days — hence 100 and 1.
This is Rwanda’s gift to the world: understanding what it means to be human.
What it is
Ten minutes, with people you already know.
Be a Champion invites young people to share a story of humanity — a simple ten-minute process, done with friends, with family, in a group, or even with a stranger.
It launches in July 2029: the month the hundred days ended in 1994, and the moment Rwanda turns to look forward.
Every participant is one step from the rest of the movement — the story links to the Badge and the online content, so anyone who wants to go further has somewhere to go.
How it works
Partners carry it. Young people spread it.
- Launches July 2029 — the month Rwanda’s hundred days ended and the country turned to look forward.
- Develop a public service announcement media campaign, building on the success of Candles for Rwanda in 2009.
- Campaign — Sharing Stories of Humanity: ten minutes with friends and family, linked to the Badge and online content.
Ten minutes is the whole designThe act has to be small enough that anyone will do it and real enough that it changes something. A campaign that asks for an afternoon reaches thousands. One that asks for ten minutes can reach a hundred million.
How it would be funded
Sponsorship, and surpluses from the earlier years.
The campaign would be funded through sponsorship and from surpluses generated over the initial years — not from the capital that funds the Pathway.
Its reach depends on media and youth-network partners carrying it, rather than on Champions delivering it. That is the point: no campaign of this size can be bought at this budget, only joined.
Nothing else in this plan depends on this pillar. It is upside, and it is costed as such — which is also what makes it safe to aim high.
Builds on
Relationships already in place.
- Candles for Rwanda — the campaign created by Aegis and the Kigali Genocide Memorial for the fifteenth commemoration in 2009. The 2029 campaign would build on it, twenty years on.
- Kwibuka 30, in 2024 — the partnership developed with Million Peacemakers, on a journey to train 250 million peacemakers by 2035.
- The Big 6 youth organisations, who together engage more than 250 million young people — and whose Youth Empowerment Fund recipients have already taken part in a Nonflict workshop, more than 80 of them across a dozen countries.
The opportunity
The one that reaches everybody else.
A hundred million young people told that there is life, hope and humanity after darkness — by someone they know, in ten minutes, at the moment the world is already looking at Rwanda.
It is the only pillar that cannot be bought, and the only one that could reach further than everything else combined.
Rwanda lost a million people in a hundred days.
A hundred million should know what came after.
For more information contact Glen Ford at glen@35champions.com
This page is a draft concept note prepared for discussion. The campaign described depends on partnerships and endorsements not yet agreed, and the figures are outline estimates rather than projections. Any use of commemoration framing would be developed with the Kigali Genocide Memorial, IBUKA and survivors’ organisations.