From South London to Cambridge University: The Scholarship that changed my life

Joseph Vambe was one of the first cohort of students to receive a Stormzy Scholarship for Cambridge University. He shares how studying at Cambridge changed his life and impacted his faith

I have always found the process of making wine interesting. Wine does not just appear beautifully bottled on a table somewhere. It starts with grapes being crushed. There is a pressing, a breaking down, a process that probably does not look very glamorous at the beginning. But somehow, through that crushing, something rich and meaningful is produced.

That is probably the best way I can describe my journey to Cambridge.

Before moving there, I had only visited Cambridge once, and that was for my interview. I did not grow up walking around Cambridge or places like it, imagining that one day I would belong there. It felt very far away from my life in London.

By the time I found out I was receiving the Stormzy Scholarship, about a month before I moved to Cambridge, I had been through a lot. I had been excluded while I was in my first year of Sixth Form. I was dealing with heavy bereavements amongst family and friends. There were things I had experienced that had left me feeling quite crushed, even if I did not always have the language for it at the time.

When the Cambridge offer, followed by scholarship came, it felt like God was doing something with all of that. It felt like I had gone from crushed grapes into wine. Not finished or perfect wine, but wine that was ready for something new. Ready to step into the world with a sense of purpose and allow God to continue the work He had started in me.

Whenever I’ve read the Bible, I have always been drawn to people who had gone through adversity. People like Joseph, who was crushed terribly during his childhood, betrayed by his brothers, sold, imprisoned and forgotten, but still went on to do some great things. I do not think those stories are there just to inspire. They show us something real about God – that what breaks us does not have to be the end of us.

By the time I arrived in Cambridge, I was ready to leave some of the difficulty, the pain, the instability, and all the things I had been dealing with, in London. I arrived with optimism, hope and a real sense of opportunity. Cambridge felt alien to me, but I was excited. It was now going to become my home for the next four years.

At first, it felt like the culmination of all those crushed grapes. Like I had arrived. But I did not realise that Cambridge was not the end of the process. It was the beginning of a new one.

I was suddenly surrounded by people from all walks of life. Many came from very privileged backgrounds. Some had gone to elite schools across the world. Some had parents who were prime ministers, CEOs, senior leaders in major companies, and people I had only read about or seen from a distance. Cambridge was just an hour away from London, but everything about it felt like a long way from home. The architecture, the history, the rooms, the traditions, the way people spoke, the confidence people carried… It was a lot.

In many ways, I was about to experience a new type of crushing. Feelings of isolation. Managing the workload. Figuring out who I was. Figuring out whether I belonged. Trying to make sense of being in a place that was both a blessing and a challenge.

Cambridge is a very difficult place to study at. If you are going to study at one of the most prestigious academic institutions in the world, it should push you. And it did. It was rigorous, demanding and often overwhelming. Many students struggle to cope with it, and I understood why. You are constantly being stretched intellectually, emotionally and personally.

I studied Human, Social and Political Sciences at King’s College, Cambridge, for three years. After graduating, I stayed for an additional year to study a Master’s in Politics and International Studies, also at King’s. Those four years shaped me deeply.

What Cambridge gave me more than anything was not just an academic education, the network, the access or the name on the CV – although all of those things do matter. The biggest thing Cambridge gave me was belief – that I could become the wine that came from crushed grapes.

It gave me a confidence I did not have before. A sense that I did not need to shrink myself in certain rooms. I did not need to wait for permission to speak. I did not need to assume that leadership was for other people from other backgrounds.

As I was coming to the end of my Master’s in 2022, I was elected as one of the youngest councillors in Southwark, London, where I served for four years. I also worked for a brief period in Parliament, when Keir Starmer was Leader of the Opposition, before leaving to join Christian Aid. I have now worked in different roles at Christian Aid and currently serve as Church Relations Manager.

A lot of what I learnt at Cambridge has helped me in my working life. It helped me think critically, write clearly, analyse complex issues and speak with more confidence. But more than that, it helped me understand systems. Power. Inequality. History. Politics. It helped me understand that poverty is not just bad luck, and injustice is not just unfortunate. These things are often created, protected and repeated by systems.

That understanding shapes the way I work at Christian Aid, whose work is about justice and standing with people experiencing poverty and injustice across the world – not as an act of pity, but as an act of solidarity. My education helped me connect my faith, my politics and my own story in a deeper way. It helped me understand that building God’s Kingdom and helping bring about a more just world are not two separate things. For me, they have always belonged together.

Whenever I think about being a ‘Stormzy Scholar’, I do not just think about the money or the opportunity, although both changed my life. I think about what it represented. It was a sign that somebody saw value in people like me. It was a sign that young Black people from different backgrounds should not have to beg to be seen as brilliant, capable or worthy of investment.

I still feel like I am in the process of becoming. I do not think the crushing ever fully stops. Life continues to challenge you. Work challenges you. Faith challenges you. Leadership definitely challenges you. But I now understand the crushing differently. Sometimes, it is part of the process of God producing something deeper, stronger and more useful in you.

My journey to Cambridge was not straightforward. My journey since Cambridge has not been straightforward either. But I am grateful for all of it – the exclusion, the grief, the scholarship, the isolation, the confidence, the politics, the Church, Christian Aid, all of it.

Because somehow, through all of that, God has been making new wine.

JOSEPH VAMBE

British Church Relations Manager, Christian Aid

Connect on LinkedIn @ Joseph Vambe