Skip to main content
Latest 24 January 2025

“A lot of us called her mum”

One of the thousands of young people given love and support by Kids Company speaks movingly at Camila Batmanghelidjh’s funeral in 2024.

At Camila Batmanghelidjh’s funeral in January 2024, Feras, one of Kids Company’s many young clients, gave a moving speech about her “mission to get my life on track, fill it with love, and make me feel like I belong.”

Feras wanted us to share this video as part of our support for the legal challenge against the Charity Commission’s report that damaged Kids Company’s reputation. Because among the salacious news stories, formal reports, legal rulings, and political grandstanding, we haven’t listened enough to the voices that matter most: those of the troubled young people whose lives were turned around by Camila and Kids Company.

Good Law Project is powered by people across the UKDonate now

To Feras and other young people like him, Camila was a force of nature. She was a disruptive pioneer in children’s services. But, more than anything, she was someone who never gave up on kids and gave them what they needed most – love.

But in 2015, Kids Company closed after allegations of financial mismanagement and sexual impropriety blew up in the press. While a High Court ruling fully exonerated Camila and Kids Company in 2021, this vindication not only came far too late to save the charity but also went largely unnoticed. This piece by Guardian journalist Patrick Butler sets out some of the possible reasons why.

We’re now supporting a legal challenge to the report to start to undo the injustice it wrought.

This is why Feras wants us to share this video, so that more people can hear from the kids who Camila and Kids Company never stopped caring about.

Part of campaign

The kids of Kids Company deserve justice

View campaign
The kids of Kids Company deserve justice