Maltese student wins prestigious Prince’s Trust Global Young Achiever Award

Christian Axisa, a Maltese student, has been honoured with the prestigious Prince’s Trust Global Young Achiever Award, an international recognition celebrating inspiring young individuals who have overcome significant challenges to achieve positive outcomes.

Christian has previously found mainstream education to be overwhelming and would often suffer regular migraines which often led to him missing school altogether.

That all changed when Christian enrolled in the Achieve programme, which offers practical, topic-based learning through hands-on projects and activities in small groups. The Prince’s Trust International’s Achieve programme is intended to help students aged between 13 and 19, who struggle with mainstream learning, to re-engage with education and succeed. The Achieve programme is supported by the HSBC Malta Foundation and the Ministry for Education, Sport, Youth, Research and Innovation.

Since joining the programme, Christian has made huge strides in both his personal and social development.

“I enjoyed creating new things and learning about money. I enjoyed using the tools in the lab. I enjoyed learning in different ways,” Christian said, urging others to join the programme. “It’s fun and we can be creative.”

“Christian’s achievements serve as an inspiring testament to the transformative potential of alternative, practical, and topic-based learning approaches,” emphasized Geoffrey Fichte CEO of HSBC Malta. “His journey is a source of immense pride, and it exemplifies the profound long-term positive influence that the Achieve programme consistently imparts upon students throughout Malta.”

Since being launched in 2015, the Achieve programme has reached over 2,500 students like Christian and has provided them with the skills they need to thrive. The programme’s network has grown to include 65 schools and educational institutions that run PTI programmes, with the number of available study units increasing from 63 in 2015/2016 to 400 today, of which 344 are equivalent to MQF Level 3 or higher.

HSBC Malta Foundation is proud to support this programme and looks forward to celebrating more success stories like Christian’s in the future.