Ep.24 Here’s What The Government Doesn’t Want You To Know: Kwajo Tweneboa On The Social Housing Crisis

01/16/23 • 40 min

Kwajo Tweneboa, known as the hero of social housing, is a remarkable 23-year-old campaigner demanding urgent reform in public-sector housing. Amid the housing crisis, Kwajo has emerged as an influential voice online for social housing tenants, known best for naming and shaming some of the largest accommodation associations in the UK.

Haunted by memories of his own housing hell, Kwajo joined the fight to improve conditions after his father, a care worker, died in their family home among a sea of cockroaches, mould and vermin. To make matters worse, just a week after his death Kwajo and his siblings were informed their tenancy contract had been evicted and therefore they must leave, in essence making them homeless. By some miracle, Kwajo and his family were allowed to stay, but for Kwajo this was understandably still not good enough - the conditions were still terrible.

Astounded by how he had been treated, Kwajo channelled his anguish and publicly exposed his landlord for breaching housing standards, ignoring calls and allowing his family to live in unimaginable filth. His first post went viral, reaching the attention of mainstream news and his housing association who eventually came to fix the problems. Kwajo now uses his online presence to help others share their housing horrors, becoming an active proponent for change in the UK - his campaign backed by nearly 62,000 followers on Twitter.

While a picture-perfect image for social housing still seems a world away, Kwajo's work on behalf of other tortured tenants has begun to make a real difference, his work sparking the conversation among significant journalists and MPs.

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Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Previous Episode

Ep.23 ‘If Things Aren't Going To Plan, You Need To Question The Plan’ The Power Of Failing With Elizabeth Day

Elizabeth Day is an award-winning British author, broadcaster, and influential host of the hugely successful How to Fail podcast. A podcast that celebrates failure and lessons learned, every week How to Fail invites a new influential guest to open and talk honestly about challenges and vulnerabilities in their personal life, in a bid to show listeners that perfection doesn't exist.

Elizabeth was inspired to start the podcast following a particularly challenging period in her own life - a time when nothing went according to plan. Approaching her forties, Elizabeth found herself single, divorced, and struggling to conceive the children she’d always dreamed of having. Accepting that life is full of failure, Elizabeth launched the podcast to show people how to turn failings into something more positive, and how it’s never too late to change your life. With influential people from a range of backgrounds desperate to talk about failure, the podcast virtually took off overnight, attracting A-list celebrities including Mel C and Alexandra Burke to come on and share their story.

As well as being podcast host Elizabeth is also the best-selling author of several books, her newest called ‘Friendaholic: Confessions of a Friendship Addict’ which comes out this April. Alongside this, Elizabeth has a long-standing career in print journalism and has won various awards of recognition, her writing featured in huge publication companies such as Vogue, Elle and Grazia.

Today’s episode is for anyone who needs to celebrate the myriad of things that may be going wrong. In the episode Elizabeth shares her honest, uplifting story of her own experience of failure, as well as the insights gained doing interviews with people from all walks of life. The message of today’s episode is vitally important - things in life WILL go wrong, but failure and what we can learn from it, can inform a future of success.

Elizabeth's earlier years and time at Cambridge

Writing for her local newspaper at the age of 12

Elizabeth's life-changing work experience at The Evening Standard

The start of Elizabeth's novel-writing career

Elizabeth and I discuss the side effects of people pleasing

Elizabeth opens up about the divorce as one of her failures

The beginnings of the How to Fail podcast

Confirmation bias between men and women on perceptions of failure

Elizabeth's biggest failures

Elizabeth asks me my tips for creating a safe space when having an online presence

The biggest things Elizabeth's learned from the guests on her podcast

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Next Episode

Ep.25 Girls Gotta Eat Reveal All: Dating, Friendships And The Power Of Saying Yes

Rayna Greenberg and Ashley Hesseltine are the hilarious hosts behind Girls Gotta Eat, one of the biggest US comedy podcast’s all about dating, sex and relationships. With over 200 episodes and 2.5 million downloads per month, Girls Gotta Eat has been educating and entertaining listeners on all things sexual fetishes to finances, bringing in special guests including therapists, comedians and authors to offer expert advice. Dating, break-ups, sex fails, getting rejected and being ghosted have happened to everyone, and this podcast explores it all; featuring honest and hilarious conversation along the way.

Earlier this year Ashley and Rayna also launched their own brand ‘Good Vibes Only’, a first-of-its-kind sex toy company that connects to an audio-erotica app, with an aim to make porn more accesible to women. With one of the vibrators in their collection having sold out twice, with a perpetual waitlist, Ashley and Rayna are killing the game and I’m so excited to be sitting down with them today to hear all about how they got to where they are today.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.