Ming came to the UK from China when she was 6 years old and this had a fundamental impact on her life. Ming notes that her school in Southport was “quite small but quite nice, they taught me English”. Ming recalls that being different was just part of her everyday life, when her family moved, Ming was the only non-white, non-British person in her school in County Durham. “I stood out as a person, and I got a chance to be myself because I already had this unique thing… there was literally no way I could blend in”. This experience gave Ming the confidence to pursue her education. She had an extremely successful set of GCSE’s and gained a scholarship to a boarding school in Yorkshire. It was here that she noticed a class difference. She experienced a cultural shock, her background was very different to here classmates whose families were diplomats and business owners.
Ming’s experience at boarding school, along with her experiences of capitalism and society as a whole, influenced her understanding of success – she felt that her value was solely based on her productivity and ability to earn money. This extended to university and her views on her future life. She described taking part in the Environmental Leadership Programme at UpRising as an intervention to this line of thinking. “My value of success completely changed since UpRising, and led me onto different paths, a different path in my life where I allowed myself to be creative and explorative”. The programme gave Ming the opportunity to see another future for herself, “It’s like I have all of these amazing people with amazing knowledge,… and values, like all at my hands, and I had never had that before.”