2023 Tenacious Award Winners

  • Kwajo Tweneboa

    Kwajo Tweneboa is a campaigner and content creator from London, who campaigns against poor social housing conditions.

    Kwajo’s Tenacious Award is supporting his work shining a light on the conditions housing providers and governments have kept hidden, helping make meaningful change one home at a time.

  • Diarmaid McDonald

    Diarmaid McDonald has been working to win health justice and equitable access to medicines for over 20 years.

    Diarmaid’s Tenacious Award is supporting Just Treatment, a patient-led campaign group he set up in 2017 to help NHS patients whose lives are being put at risk by the profit-driven behaviour of big pharma.

  • Zelda Perkins

    Zelda Perkins has been campaigning against the misuse of non-disclosure agreements since 2017 when she broke an NDA, signed decades earlier, with Harvey Weinstein. She was awarded the UN Women UK Outstanding Contribution to Gender Equality in 2023.

    Zelda’s Tenacious Award is supporting Can't Buy My Silence, a global campaign she co-founded in September 2021 with Professor Julie MacFarlane to change legislation and regulation around the misuse of non-disclosure agreements.

  • The Three Hijabi's

    Huda Jawad, Amna Abdullatif and Shaista Aziz are campaigners working to end racism, misogyny and Islamophobia in sports and the arts.

    Their Tenacious Award is supporting The Three Hijabis, campaign against racism and misogyny in Football and sports. They launched in 2021, following the racist abuse directed at Black players on the England national team after the Euro 2020 final.

  • Mya-Rose Craig

    Mya-Rose Craig (AKA Birdgirl) is a British-Bangladeshi birder, environmentalist, climate change and anti-racism activist.

    Mya-Rose’s Tenacious Award is supporting Black2Nature, a Visible Minority Ethnic (VME) led charity. Black2Nature campaign for equal access to nature for all but concentrate on Visible Minority Ethnic communities who are currently excluded from the countryside.

  • Tori Tsui

    Tori Tsui is a UK based climate justice activist, speaker and consultant from Hong Kong. Her work centres around climate justice, making sure that climate policy, action and organising is intersectional, inclusive and transformative.

    Tori’s Tenacious Award is supporting the Latin American Youth Climate Scholarship, helping 13 BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and People of Colour) grassroots climate activists from all over Latin America to actively take part in the UN Climate Conference COP28 in Dubai.

  • "There is so little support available for campaigners and it takes such a huge toll fighting the status quo – that’s why the Tenacious Awards fund was such an amazing recognition and help."

    Zelda Perkins
    Tenacious Awardee 2023

  • "It's really incredible to see a new cohort of grassroots climate activists from all over Latin America, who are now going to actively take part in the UN Climate Conference COP28 thanks to the funding from the Tenacious Awards."

    Tori Tsui
    Tenacious Awardee 2023

  • "This work is immediate in a way that policy is not. It started out as a very personal and very local campaign. It feels really important to be helping local communities with immediacy."

    Maya-Rose Craig (AKA Birdgirl)
    Tenacious Awardee 2023

  • “Being tenacious is being genuine, being forthright, being committed, and being relentless.”

    Kwajo Tweneboa
    Tenacious Awardee 2023

  • “Tenacious is what we also think of as audacious. The Three Hijabis are audacious with joy, and we bring that to our work.”

    Huda Jawad
    Tenacious Awardee 2023

  • “The world around you might start changing and things might get more difficult. But if you're focused on your vision and then sticking to that path - that’s tenacity.”

    Diarmaid McDonald
    Tenacious Awardee 2023