Kwajo Tweneboa
(Picture: Kwajo / @artbykwaj)Dragon Den’s Steven Bartlett has pledged £10,000 to social housing activist Kwajo Tweneboa to aid his charitable quest.
The 22-year-old activist’s exposé of poor social housing conditions began after his own Mitcham home was in disrepair during his late father’s treatment for oesophageal cancer.
Following Mr Tweneboa’s LBC interview, radio host Camilla Tominey pled the young student’s case on Twitter – and the Dragon made his offer.
Bartlett promised to grant £10,000, recording equipment and mentorship to Mr Tweneboa’s previously self-funded project.
He wrote on Twitter: “What an incredible young man leading an important fight to improve Social Housing in the UK.”
“If I scream in this underground station I’m in right now,” Mr Tweneboa wrote in reply.
The student and artist spoke to Tominey on Sunday about the “dreadful conditions” he lived in before his father’s passing, with no bathroom or kitchen and infestations of cockroaches, mice and mould.
He said: “Whilst we were living in social housing, he became ill.
“He couldn’t eat or drink, he had to be fed through a tube in his stomach.
“He was bed bound and he was receiving medical treatment in these sorts of conditions and he eventually passed away.”
On his Twitter page, @KwajoHousing, he shared some of the worse situations he had witnessed including one tenant’s bedroom being overrun with “hundreds of cockroaches”.
Another tenant was found burnt by a central heating pipe that exploded.
Mr Tweneboa added: “I have been fighting even up until last year with disrepair and my housing association to try and get things sorted.
“This is a national crisis which has been swept under the carpet for many, many years – longer than I’ve been alive.”
