Simba Li

Founder,
Start Your Spark

Simba Li is a teen advocate for Catalyst 2030 and a youth councillor of Learning Planet who uses his voice to tackle the socio-economic issues that plague the world. While completing his IB studies in English literature, Modern History, and Philosophy, Simba is focused on raising awareness for the current refugee crisis in Ukraine. 

During his free time, Simba is involved in the ENGin Program, a non-profit organisation that gathers volunteer English teachers for Ukrainian youth. Having personally taught English to a Ukrainian girl for two years, Simba is also part of ENGin’s Ambassador team, recruiting more English-speaking volunteers from his school and local area. In a school assembly, Simba launched the ‘ENGin Initiative’ that aims to assemble 50 volunteers to be paired with Ukrainian youth. So far, 35 have signed up to take part in this initiative to connect Ukrainians with the English-speaking world. 

Through his time as a volunteer English teacher, Simba understood the widespread ignorance in the world, with many turning a blind eye to the suffering of Ukrainians in particular. To counteract this ignorance, Simba started a Spotify Podcast with a friend called ‘What is it Like?’ In this podcast, Simba invites his Ukrainian student and her friends to share their experiences as youth facing the hardships of war. To further emphasise the importance of dispelling ignorance in the current world, Simba invites many individuals to share their culture and history on his Spotify podcast.

From his youth, Simba always valued Mahatma Gandhi’s quote, ‘Be the change that you want to see in the world.’ Realising that he cannot combat the 17 SDGs and widespread ignorance alone, he created his online entrepreneurial program: START your SPARK. With a series of 10 tutorials, Simba educates young entrepreneurs on the basics of starting and running a business. In this way, Simba hopes that more youth could turn their imagination into innovation. 

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Looking ahead, Simba strives for the best, and if he could go to a world-class university such as Oxford or Yale, it would be a dream come true. As for a career, he would like to delve into history and media, and his sense of empathy carries him forward with this decision as he would love to help people in difficult situations tackle their problems. Whether in education, poverty or refugee action, Simba has already proved that everything he does lies beyond pure imagination. For him, action means that dreams can come true.