Haringey Learning Partnership Year 10 student Mia Currie shares her experience of knocking on the prime minister’s door

Lifting the majestic, brass lion-head door knocker and giving it my best rat-a-tat-tat, I wait with bated breath for the door to swing open. You’d recognise where I’m standing, even if you cropped the photo to within a few feet of my hastily-polished Mary-Janes. It’s an iconic site. The glossiest, most famous door in all the land: Number 10 Downing Street.

Together with my schoolmate Amario, and representatives from Oxfam UK, we are hand-delivering a petition signed by 45,000 people, calling for the UK government to increase humanitarian aid to address the urgent crisis in East Africa. Over 28 million people across Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia and South Sudan are already experiencing extreme hunger, and Oxfam is urging the prime minister to act before a famine is declared. With the budget decreased by 80% from £861 million in 2017, to just £156 million this time, and with the famine worse than it’s been in 40 years, now is the time to act.

Taking a petition to Downing Street is no guarantee of instant results, of course. But it is an effective way to highlight a campaign and put pressure on our prime minister and the government to do more. The excitement on the day is palpable. It doesn’t sound like much – travelling halfway across London to knock on the door of someone that you know isn’t home (that day, the newspapers were full of pictures of Rishi Sunak at the G7 in Japan) – but as our tube pulls into Westminster, I feel a rush of adrenaline.

Oxfam had arranged for a photographer to come on the trip with us. We took a lot of pictures before delivering the petition, held up a cloth banner that said “SOLIDARITY WITH EAST AFRICA” in bold red letters, and filmed a short video for Oxfam to broadcast across social media. Then, just six of us stood outside the high black gates for a couple of minutes, waiting for the police to check our passports. Without them we wouldn’t be allowed in, and one of the officers, with the biggest guns I’ve ever seen in my life, would escort us out. But luckily Amario and myself both had the correct identification and we walked through security breezily.

This isn’t a day I’ll forget in a hurry. It was an honour and a real privilege to deliver the petition. Oxfam will continue to press for action and will be sharing the government’s official response and updates through its social media channels. For my part, I will continue to campaign on this cause, and hope that I can bring more attention to it through articles like this.

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