‘Everyone has the opportunity to make a difference’

Kajal Odedra, 34, is UK director of change.org, the world’s largest petition website, with 200m users worldwide and more than 17m of them in the UK.

When I was young, I noticed that minorities were often ignored and dismissed. My parents were immigrants and moved to the Midlands in search of a better life. I saw people treat them with contempt. This was painful, and had a huge impact on me.

But my brilliant parents – who ran a corner shop – were so supportive of me and my three sisters, and I grew up feeling I could accomplish anything.

I was so affected by the Asian tsunami in 2004 that, after graduating, I volunteered in Thailand, helping to look after children in an orphanage. When I returned to the UK, I began working for major charities including Crisis and Macmillan Cancer Support.

When change.org came on to the scene in 2012, it was so disruptive, as it was a digital petition platform allowing anyone to share their story and ignite change. Before that, it had been very difficult to get your voice heard. It is free to launch a petition, so it allows normal people to really make a difference. This spoke directly to my values, so I joined as a campaigner in 2013, and worked my way up to UK director in 2017.

I manage a small team of eight people, and our job is to support ordinary people to start and win campaigns: we parachute around them as their communications and strategy team. We choose petitions with clear aims and a winnable outcome. Most people don’t know how to make their cause stand out and hit headlines, so we guide them every step of the way. The more successful petitions there are, the more it inspires others. The platform is incredible and so many petitions have brought about real change. Laura Coryton’s petition to end the tampon tax garnered more than 320,000 signatures, and the tax is due to be removed by 2022.

Some petitions have really affected me personally, like Richard Ratcliffe’s petition to free his wife, Nazanin, from imprisonment in Iran, which broke our record of 2.2m signatures. Often we are helping people through their darkest periods, after they have experienced huge loss. In 2017, in the wake of terror attacks and the Grenfell Tower fire, there was a spike in petitions. It was devastating, but seeing people speak up, to shine a light on heroic and compassionate actions, gave me so much hope in the human spirit in the midst of great tragedy.

It’s also really interesting to see how petitions change over time. After Blue Planet II aired, we saw an increase in petitions about plastic and the environment; this is only getting bigger. It’s great to see the impact it’s making.

I’m often asked my advice about how to campaign, so I’ve written a book called Do Something, about the steps people can take to ignite change. My biggest aim is to show people that they have the power to raise their voices, because everyone deserves to be heard.  Do Something: Activism For Everyone (Hodder & Stoughton) by Kajal Odedra is out now

My aim is to show people they have the power to raise their voices