One family's gift to the talented young people of Essex

Essex is often pictured as comfortable commuter county, all market towns and easy access to London.  It is also home to communities of every background and to young people whose talent far outstrips the resources around them.  For many gifted teenagers living in lower-income circumstances, questions like how to pay the cost of travel or equipment, and who chooses to provide it, shapes what they are able to become.

For one Essex family, the choice to support young people grew out of profound loss.

Ajvir Singh Sandhu was an exceptionally talented young person from Essex whose lifelong dream was to fly.  Introduced to the air cadets at thirteen, he stayed on until he was twenty, his natural ability and leadership winning him a string of awards.  After graduating from Durham University, Ajvir joined the RAF in 2015 and began training as a fast jet pilot.  He flew alongside the Red Arrows and the Slovak Air Force.  Then, on 30 April 2016, his life was tragically cut short by a light aircraft accident near his training base in North Yorkshire.  He was just twenty-five years old.

In the face of that grief, Ajvir's family chose to turn his memory into momentum for others.  They set up the Ajvir Singh Sandhu Leadership Foundation Fund through Essex Community Foundation, with a clear and personal purpose: to support talented young people in Essex, particularly those who excel in sport, music, academics and military disciplines.  The fund carries Ajvir's name, his story and his determination into the lives of young people he will never meet.

As his father, Amrik Sandhu, put it:

"We want to support the talented young people of today, helping them to become the leaders of tomorrow, allowing them to spread their wings and fly as high as Ajvir."

Ajvir’s fund is already helping young people with their own steep climbs ahead.  Among them is R, from Basildon, who studied philosophy, politics and economics at Oxford and was chosen as a UK Youth Delegate to the COP28 climate conference; support from the fund helped with the cost of getting there. 

Another to receive a leg up is L, from Leigh-on-Sea, who has dreamed of dancing since she was six and won a place at the Royal Ballet School after a rigorous audition.  The fund helped towards the training that will take her there.  As her mother, M, puts it:

“Following your dream can be expensive, and that support has been enormously helpful.”

Choosing to back these young people’s dreams, Amrik says, was a unanimous decision, because there is a similar theme in their attitude to growing and succeeding that aligns perfectly with the fund's values.  It is exactly the spirit that Ajvir's family set out to honour: young people, given a hand at the right moment, spreading their wings.