New Year Honour for Lucy Whitehouse StM'10

Lucy Whitehouse StM’10 is absolutely thrilled to have been honoured with an MBE in the King’s New Year Honours for her services to teenage education. Lucy set up Fumble in 2016, an award-winning youth charity with a mission to provide young people with the skills and knowledge to successfully manage their relationships, sexual and mental health.

Lucy was one of our very first cohort of girl students and after leaving Worth went on to study English at the University of York, followed by a Masters in Translation Research at UCL. This led to a job in journalism as the Editor of a leading trade publication for the beauty and personal care industry. Lucy was actively involved in Identity magazine whilst at Worth and feels that it was that great grounding in journalism and media that has influenced her career to date.

Lucy’s interest in young people’s mental health deepened when she joined and created a digital campaign for the charity YoungMinds. This led to her founding her very own charity, Fumble. With young people turning to the internet with questions but accessing a lot of unhealthy content, Fumble’s aim is to redress the balance and offer an alternative and reliable voice in the digital world.

As Lucy explains, 'The challenges facing young people growing up in a digital age were definitely evident when I was at Worth. We were the first generation to grow up with life online - we had intranet, email and iTunes, and that was tricky enough to navigate. Today's young people have Tiktok and predatory algorithms - they need support to navigate it all! That's where Fumble comes in.'

Lucy is now a leading voice in her field having written comment pieces for major national publications and appeared on BBC News and Times Radio. She loves running Fumble and says, 'it's creative, challenging, impactful and busy and I'm really proud of how far we've come'. We are delighted for Lucy and very proud of her success and wish her much deserved congratulations.

If you'd like to find out more about Fumble you can contact Lucy at lucy@fumble.org.uk