WITH the aim of bringing happiness to the world and motivating others to fight coronavirus a nine-year-old Winchester boy has launched a YouTube channel.

Ibraheem Usmani created HopeCast after he realised that there are many children, not only in the UK but around the world, who are stuck at home, confused and scared about the current situation.

Uploading his first video last month, he is now recording in nine different languages, with more to come

Ibraheem, a pupil at Western Church of England Primary School, said: “I really wanted to contribute and help others during these difficult times. I wanted to show the world that as a nine-year-old, I cannot do much to physically volunteer and help the society, but I can bring some happiness to the world and motivate others to fight with this virus.

“My dad wrote a little poem for me, The R-nought of hope is higher than the virus. And I realised that the strongest way to fight the virus is, hope. Thus the HopeCast was born.”

The aim is for the channel to become a collaborative project, with initially Ibraheem and his dad Arsalan recording a few episodes before they invited friends and family get involved.

Now the channel has uploaded 57 videos with thousands of views.

“After the first few videos went online, I couldn’t believe the response. We started getting messages, and poetry requests and recordings from total strangers,” Ibraheem said.

“People from all over the world, all ages and walks of life, started to share pictures and scenes from their communities.”

A seven-year-old boy from Pakistan has written special poems for the channel, along with Winchester MP Steve Brine, and others from across the world contributing to the platform.

More recently the channel published a video highlighting the rise of domestic abuse for children during the lockdown, with a stranger sending a message to Ibraheem saying how much the poetry and the message moved her.

“My dream was to make a platform, where adults and children alike can express and share their feelings through poetry, drawings, photographs, and other forms of creativity.

“These little creative gestures can then be shared with the whole world, to raise awareness, and if nothing else, just to bring a little smile to someone’s face.”

Ibraheem added that he hopes to “inspire so many people around the world, and to know that I made someone smile and east their burden a bit today, to me that is the biggest reward”.

But the YouTuber has further ambitions to make HopeCast the biggest, non-profit, collaborative channel on the platform securing a Guinness World Record.

To view any of the videos and subscribe to the channel, go to www.youtube.com and search ‘HopeCast’.