Joel Davis: Young People of the Year Award 2014

Young people of the year awards 2014 was held this Saturday afternoon at 5pm. Many young people attended the event. We talked with some people from the crowd and here is what they have to say. “I think it’s really exciting seeing people your own age group get up on that stage and tell about their success.”. The award show had a crowd of 30.000 people, so it was quite a setting.

Joel Davis

This year’s winner was Joel Davis from Islington, London. Joel was born into poverty in 1995. His mother was always extremely sick, and his father was a drunk, so he was never at home. Joel and his 3 siblings had to watch out for themselves. They never got any help. A few months after Joel turned 14 his mother passed. When his dad found out he took all their stuff and took off. Joel and his siblings were now at rock bottom ones again. They needed to work or else they would not survive. Joel started working in the library of a public school. Joel had to help younger students read and find books. But Joel rarely ever went to school himself, so he struggled a lot with reading. After about a month of working in the library he was tired of not being able to help the kids as much as he wanted. After every shift he stayed at the library 2-3 hours every time and practiced reading. He was a very quick learner and became excellent at reading. He started to learn methods to read faster and more precise. He started offering the kids who had a hard time doing well in school, extra lessons in his free time. By the time he was 16 he had inspired a lot of people to help others and started his own tutoring service where he hired university students to help children. Within a year he had 30 employees and had helped more than 170 kids. The word started to get out and other people started copying his idea. Joel thinks its great because then more kids can get the help they need.