The 31 year old CEO of a prominent Social Enterprise dedicated to Democratic Engagement and improving young people’s critical thinking and resilience to disinformation has received a Royal honour.
Matteo Bergamini, CEO of Shout Out UK, a social enterprise he started at 22, has been made an MBE by King Charles III for Services to Charity, Social Enterprise and Education in the 2023 King’s Birthday Honours.
MBEs are awarded to individuals who have demonstrated outstanding and impactful service to the community.
The honour recognises Bergamini’s work to make Political & Media Literacy more widely available in schools and helping young people develop their critical thinking and resilience to disinformation.
Founder and CEO of Shout Out UK, a multi-award winning social enterprise that provides impartial Political and Media Literacy training and campaigns focused on democratic engagement and combatting disinformation online, tailored to local circumstances and culture.
From September 2021 to March 2023, Matteo led Shout Out UK during its delivery of Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport’s Youth Policy Development group. This group consisted of 40 exceptional young people from all walks of life across England, who advised government ministers on a variety of different policy fields. Shout Out UK administered a rigorous inclusive recruitment campaign, as well as the ongoing mentoring of Shout Out UK members, political literacy training, policy brief training, and public speaking training. The training equipped young people with the essential skills needed to engage in constructive debates, develop well-founded policy briefs, and effectively present their ideas to real-world policy-makers. These aforementioned activities allowed the diverse young people in the YPDG to feel confident to represent their peers and express their needs and concerns directly to senior government officials and civil servants on issues that mattered to them.
Alongside establishing his organisation, Matteo was appointed to NewsGuard’s Board of News Literacy Advisors in 2023, is a member of Meta’s EU Digital Working Group, since 2022, and is a regular contributor on Times Radio on the topic of media and political literacy.
He was selected in 2018 by the US embassy in London to take part in the International Visitor Exchange Programme run by the US State Department and was added to the Forbes Under 30 Social Impact list in 2021.
In 2020, Matteo orchestrated London Voter Registration Week with the Greater London Authority, a campaign that brought together 33 local authorities and 100+ civil society organisations. In the first year it reached 2.6 million people and managed to boost youth voter registration across the capital. This has now become a yearly endeavour for both him, his organisation and the Greater London Authority.
In January 2023, with the backdrop of the Elections Act 2022 and the introduction of mandatory photo ID to vote, Matteo and his organisation teamed up with the Greater London Authority once more to launch an unprecedented new campaign to help under-represented and under-registered Londoners access their right to vote
Matteo was asked to take part in the Verified UN anti-disinformation campaign, has given evidence before House of Lords select committees, and was the driving force behind the Channel 4 Youth Leaders’ Debate in 2015 and the All-Party Parliamentary group for Political Literacy, launched in 2021, of which his social enterprise is the secretariat.
Born and raised in London, he has a BA in Politics & History and a Graduate Diploma in Law. Matteo said:
“I am honoured to have received this award. It’s a testament to all the hours, sweat and tears invested in ensuring that our democracy is robust and resilient against disinformation. None of which could have been achieved without my incredible team and our amazing partners in education and government. Democracy is fragile, the pains of the past that got us to where we are, are too easily forgotten. To ensure the privileges of today continue, we must all have access to impartial Political and Media Literacy education in all schools. We all have a right to understand how our system works and a duty to ensure the information we spread is accurate to the best of our knowledge, neither of which can be achieved without the right skills.”
