SOCIAL ENTREPRENEUR
An imaginative & daring social entrepreneur, Sadie’s always experimenting with bold new ways of inspiring socially excluded young people with criminal records to empower themselves, without depending on criminal activities or state handouts to survive. For her pioneering projects with young offenders & at the invitation of HRH Prince Charles, in 2006 Sadie became an Ambassador for his Prince’s Trust charity. Since 2008, she has worked alongside visionary philanthropists, including Sir Bob Geldof, within MP Iain Duncan Smith‘s Government ‘Think Tank’, the Centre For Social Justice.
Drawing on her 6 years of experience volunteering inside Feltham Young Offenders Institute, in 2010 Sadie mentored 3 persistent young offenders while sailing a 60 ft yacht to Venezuela in her ambitious Caribbean Sailing Project. After visiting inmates inside anarchic El Rodeo Jail & being inspired by the work of the Nobel Peace Prize-shortlisted Proyecto Alcatraz, they coerce violent teenage street gangs to disarm peacefully in Caracas slums. The project was enthusiastically endorsed by Prince Charles.
In 2009 Sadie inspired teenagers from The Prince’s Trust to tame wild horses while riding them over 2800 KM across France to London. At the end of their triumphant 6-month horseback odyssey, the horses were donated to RDA disabled riding schools. One of the young riders displayed such passion for communicating with horses, in 2011 Sadie sponsored him to train as a horse whisperer at the homes of legendary horse whisperer Monty Roberts in America & Susannah Armstrong in Spain.
Sadie recently teamed up with a living legend, polo champion Carlos Gracida, to plan her most audacious project yet! Carlos, who taught Prince William & Prince Harry to play polo, will train former young offenders to play the ‘Sport Of Kings’ in return for their help building a polo school for underprivileged young people in Mexico City. Carlos & Sadie hope the school will explode the exclusivity of the sport and inspire a new generation of players.
Following the positive impact her Caribbean Sailing Project had on the persistent young offenders she mentored (all now in full-time employment or full time education), Sadie will return to the Caribbean – this time to build an orphanage. She will also lead disadvantaged teenagers from The Prince’s Trust on an Indiana Jones-style archeological expedition through the remote Honduras rainforest to unlock the secrets of an ancient civilization & present their findings to the Royal Society in London.
Sadie collaborates with The Prince’s Trust’s Get Started In Music program, providing underprivileged youngsters with an opportunity to create and record their original music & grime for broadcast on the soundtracks of her TV documentaries on Channel 4, Animal Planet, the Discovery channel & Sky.
In 2011 Sadie was appointed to the Board of Directors for the International Society for the Protection of Mustangs & Burros in America. The charity, dedicated to the preserving America’s wild horse heritage, relocates horses set for slaughter to safe Native American land in the Badlands National Park.
Sadie is proud to be partnering humanitarian activist Jody Marriott Bar-Lev in the creation of a progressive new school for Native American students in South Dakota. The Sunka Wakan Academy is being built on Native American land on Pine Ridge.
