Vijay Amin

"We have the world's most wonderful and hospitable communities living side by side. This is our real strength but we all need to do more to ensure that Londoners are at ease with each other."

Why is sustainable development important to you?
London is a beautiful city; it has the greatest potential to show the world how individuals from diverse backgrounds and interests can live and work together in harmony. This is why London is so special.

However London is also an angry city and I believe we, as Londoners, need to do "our bit" to reduce this anger so that we can all enjoy a good quality of life, now and into the future.

For me, the sustainability agenda provides a platform to ensure quality of life for all Londoners. I want to contribute to this agenda to ensure that current and future generations of Londoners maximise their economic, cultural and human potential. This is why sustainable development is important to me.

We all have the capacity to do the right thing. Respecting differences, understanding our youth, supporting our elders and being a good neighbour are all important ingredients for a happy, balanced and harmonious city.

What does being a London Leader mean to you?
We have the world's most wonderful and hospitable communities living side by side. This is our real strength but we all need to do more to ensure that Londoners are at ease with each other.

As a London Leader, I am going to use my influence in the business community and my love for different foods to galvanise entrepreneurs and communities to inspire and motivate us to take positive actions to improve the quality of our lives.

Food is a great way of bringing people together. It helps us to understand new cultures. We learn to respect our environment through our choices of what we eat and how we eat.

I will motivate and nurture more Londoners to champion the sustainability agenda and show us how taking practical actions in our everyday lives can make living and working in our city an exceptionally wonderful experience.

Past experience
I established a resident self help group to promote the sustainable agenda to over 200 residents in Park Royal (West London). I have established programmes for food businesses to increase their awareness of business benefits of recycling and managing waste. I am currently working on a project that will support African food entrepreneurs to market their products in Europe and enable them to access UK business experts.