Built from the inside.
Purposed is a youth-led NGO and Community Interest Company on a mission to ensure no young person navigates an ellipsis alone.
A message from the founder
[ Founder photo ]
Emmanuel
Founder & CEO
Durham University · RCCG Youth Leader · UN Youth Advocate · Durham’s inaugural Personal Development Champion
I started Purposed from inside my own ellipsis.
I was sixteen — first in my family to navigate any of it, caring for someone at home, carrying a disability nobody had named yet, trying to become someone without being able to see a way through. What changed everything wasn’t talent or luck. It was people who showed up: who gave me language for what I was going through, and showed me doors I didn’t know existed.
I went on to study the psychology of exactly what I’d lived, and worked directly with almost 500 young people navigating the same questions in different faces. Most of them didn’t have what I had. The difference was never ability — it was whether anyone had shown up for them the way someone showed up for me.
Purposed exists to change that. No young person should navigate their ellipsis alone — and making sure they don’t belongs to all of us.
Emmanuel — Founder & CEO
From showing up in our community to launching a movement. Hover any moment to read the story behind it.
What we are
Purposed CIC is a Community Interest Company registered in England — a non-profit whose assets are legally protected from private gain. We are not a charity in the traditional sense, and we are not a commercial company. We are something built specifically for mission: a legally constituted institution that ensures our social purpose cannot be overridden by commercial interests, now or in the future.
Everything we build — the campaign, the research programme, the platform — is an expression of one founding belief: that no young person should navigate their ellipsis alone, and that making sure they do not is everyone’s responsibility, not young people’s to solve by themselves.
Our mission and values
Our mission: to ensure no young person navigates their ellipsis alone, and to build the evidence that makes closing this gap impossible to keep ignoring.
We believe:
The becoming does not belong to young people alone to navigate.
Evidence built honestly — including when it challenges our own assumptions — is more valuable than evidence built to confirm them.
Peer governance is not aspirational. It is structural, and it is legally embedded.
Free access is not a feature. It is a founding commitment, protected in our governing documents.
The gap between crisis services and careers services is real, costly, and solvable. Naming it is not the same as closing it.
We are committed to:
Publishing all research findings regardless of direction.
Making the core platform free for every young person, forever.
Representing the full diversity of the ellipsis — including young people who are NEET, care-experienced, young carers, and from underrepresented backgrounds.
Being transparent about what we know, what we do not, and what we are still figuring out.
How we are governed
Purposed is governed by its founder as sole director in the founding period, with constitutional reserved powers protecting the mission, the brand, and free access for young people — against any future board decision that might compromise those commitments.
A Youth Advisory Forum provides formal consultative governance — young people’s voices embedded in the structure, with the Forum’s Chair eligible to join the board as a director. This is not an aspiration. It is written into the governing documents.
We believe governance is where values either hold or dissolve. Ours hold by design, not by goodwill.
The team
Emmanuel — Founder and CEO
Nineteen. Durham University. RCCG Youth Leader. UN Youth Advocate. Durham’s inaugural Personal Development Champion. Durham Student Entrepreneur of the Year 2025. Built Purposed during his own ellipsis.
[Further team members and volunteers listed as confirmed]
Youth Advisory Forum
The Forum is the formal consultative governance body for Purposed — young people’s voices in the structure, not just in the marketing. Its Chair is eligible to join the board as a director.
Our founding partners
Standard Chartered FutureMakers
founding programme partner, supporting Purposed’s mission to reach young people who are furthest from opportunity.
ELBA
founding community partner, connecting Purposed to the employer and community networks that make the Coalition possible.
Durham University
academic co-investigation partner for the Ellipsis Research Centre, providing institutional research oversight and peer-reviewed credibility.
Recognition
Durham University Personal Development Champion — inaugural
Durham Student Entrepreneur of the Year 2025
UN Youth Advocate
Black Undergraduate of the Year finalist
