{"id":22135,"date":"2024-05-28T16:20:17","date_gmt":"2024-05-28T15:20:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kbs-news-events\/?p=22135"},"modified":"2024-07-30T11:05:57","modified_gmt":"2024-07-30T10:05:57","slug":"kbs-alumnus-dr-kush-kanodia-receives-campaigner-of-the-year-recognition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kbs-news-events\/2024\/05\/kbs-alumnus-dr-kush-kanodia-receives-campaigner-of-the-year-recognition\/","title":{"rendered":"KBS alumnus, Dr Kush Kanodia, receives Campaigner of the Year recognition"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>We are pleased to congratulate disability rights champion and Kent alumnus,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.kent.ac.uk\/kent-business-school\/people\/4573\">Dr Kush Kanodia<\/a>, on receiving the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/smk.org.uk\/awards_nominations\/dr-kush-kanodia-eco-ableism-disability-discrimination-from-londons-ultra-low-emissions-zone-ulez\/\">Sheila McKechnie Foundation Campaigner of the Year award<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>His ongoing campaign has been recognised for creating reasonable adjustments for disabled people in London\u2019s ULEZ scheme. He says ULEZ is having a \u2018brutal\u2019 impact on disabled Londoners due to the fact only a third of London\u2019s tube stations are accessible, so many disabled people have no choice but to drive to access critical goods, services, and health and social care.<\/p>\n<p>The change he has created so far to London\u2019s ULEZ policy means:<\/p>\n<ul class=\"bullet-list\">\n<li>Over a quarter of a million disabled people will now be exempt from the ULEZ charge (DWP Benefits included)<\/li>\n<li>Grants for wheelchair accessible vehicles will be expanded from \u00a32K to \u00a310K<\/li>\n<li>Exemptions for carers will be introduced and the grace period extended to 2027<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>After receiving the award, Kush said: \u201cI am truly delighted and honored\u00a0to receive\u00a0the Campaigner of the Year Award from the Sheila McKechnie Foundation for 2024. This award shows that together, we can build a society that is fairer, greener, accessible, and inclusive for us all to thrive.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cClimate action must go hand in hand with climate justice and social justice to stem the tide of growing poverty and inequality in our society.\u201d<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_22136\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-22136\" style=\"width: 1920px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kbs-news-events\/files\/2024\/05\/dr-kush-kanodia-honorary-doctorate.jpeg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"wp-image-22136 size-full\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kbs-news-events\/files\/2024\/05\/dr-kush-kanodia-honorary-doctorate.jpeg\" alt=\"Dr Kush Kanodia receiving his honorary doctorate degree\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-22136\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Dr Kush Kanodia speaking during his honorary graduation ceremony in 2022<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Kush graduated from Kent Business School with a BSc in Management Science in 2000 and later achieved a Master of Business Administration (MBA). In 2022, he was\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.kent.ac.uk\/news\/community\/32100\/inspirational-social-entrepreneur-kush-kanodia-honoured-by-kent\">awarded an Honorary Degree from the University of Kent<\/a>, recognising his inspirational career as a disability rights champion and social entrepreneur.<\/p>\n<p>His campaign to abolish all disabled car parking charges at over 200 NHS trust hospitals in England, which supported over 2.5 million disabled blue badge holders in England to access critical healthcare, was acknowledged by the university as being \u201cby some margin the single largest and most impactful change in the treatment of disabled people in the history of the NHS.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We are pleased to congratulate disability rights champion and Kent alumnus,\u00a0Dr Kush Kanodia, on receiving the\u00a0Sheila McKechnie Foundation Campaigner of the Year award. His ongoing &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kbs-news-events\/2024\/05\/kbs-alumnus-dr-kush-kanodia-receives-campaigner-of-the-year-recognition\/\">Read&nbsp;more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":79181,"featured_media":22137,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[177066,9875,124],"tags":[263936,220333,263935],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kbs-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22135"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kbs-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kbs-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kbs-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/79181"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kbs-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22135"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kbs-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22135\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22138,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kbs-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22135\/revisions\/22138"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kbs-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22137"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kbs-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kbs-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/kbs-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}