Inspirational Lichfield fundraiser continues to show kindness is a superpower after being given humanitarian award

Sebbie Hall has been on a five-year journey to complete daily acts of kindness from his home in Lichfield, with the 22-year-old having done some remarkable work over that time.

This includes donating more than 5,000 meals to food banks, delivering laptops to children in Staffordshire who could not access lessons, providing communication devices to young disabled people, welcoming Ukrainian orphans arriving into the region, offering companionship to homeless individuals in Staffordshire and beyond, handing out thousands of uplifting smiley cards, and raising £100,000 for small local and national charities.

It has been an extraordinary time for Sebbie, who was born with a rare chromosome anomaly that affects his mobility, communication and learning and his family were told he might never walk or talk. 

Despite these challenges, he discovered his own superpower of kindness and was rewarded for his levels of kindness after being given a World Humanitarian Award at the World Cultural Festival in southern India in November.

His mother Ashley said Sebbie had been on a shortlist with some notable names from across the UK and spoke about why Sebbie had been given the award.

She said: "We were contacted by the One World, One Culture organisation about the festival and told that Sebbie had been chosen to represent the United Kingdom at the festival for a humanitarian act of purity and goodness.

"It came about because they had been researching kindness and the impact it had on people and found that the more they Googled, the more Sebbie kept popping up and the more they saw what he was doing.

"From that, they put his name on a shortlist of 15 people from across the United Kingdom, including Sir David Attenborough and Marcus Rashford, and they said the reason they chose Sebbie was because this country was the only one which had someone like him, who is a normal person in society and they said that showed that anyone can make a change."

Ms Hall said that some of the stories that had impressed the judges included giving freshly squeezed fruit juice to a homeless man near Borough Market in London as he felt everyone was ignoring him and giving Prince Edward a kindness card to pass on to his family, which led to a conversation with the King about the card and kindness.

Sebbie has achieved a lot in his five-year journey, from carrying the Queens Baton for the 2022 Commonwealth Games to launching the Sebbie Hall Kindness Foundation, which supports grassroots organisations helping disabled young adults who face loneliness. 

Through the Sebbie Hall Kindness Foundation, he has raised more than £100,000 for grassroots and national organisations and has now set his sights on raising £1 million to fund an assisted living village for young people with disabilities. 

Ms Hall said: "We've been offered four and a half acres of land for absolutely free, but only if an assisted living village is built on them, with the reason being that the woman who owns it is a farmer's daughter and she's got a disabled daughter and wants to make her future secure.

"At the moment, they would be put on the tender system, which means that a person's name is on a piece of paper with their disability and what that comes with is a price and houses with room bid for them, so the person with the disability won't be able to make a choice about where they live.

"You see a lot of homes for older people, with lounges and a bar and restaurant area, but there's nothing like that for younger people, so we're looking at the same model where they can have their own gardens, cafe and restaurant and be able to go out into the community to work and learn and then come home."

To find out more about the work Sebbie Hall does and to donate to the foundation, go to the Sebbie Hall Kindness Foundation website.