Rahim went from selling engines in a dusty garage to reading the national news.

Rahim Cham’s story is a reminder that no path is too unlikely, no dream too big. In less than ten years, he transformed his life more times than most people do in a lifetime.

He grew up in The Gambia, in a family where art ran deep and hip hop was the soundtrack of his childhood. But Rahim was the only one who struggled to speak fluently. For a boy with a speech impediment, the idea of standing in front of a camera seemed impossible.

Still, he found his voice, first through music, then through purpose. While working long hours in his brother’s garage, Rahim co-founded The Cypher, one of Gambia’s biggest hip hop movements. It was never just about rap battles. It was a stage for young people to challenge injustice, heal, and tell the truth after decades of dictatorship.

That was where he learned that words could spark change.

After nearly a decade in the garage, Rahim took a leap. He turned his car into a taxi, and soon after, he found himself in a TV studio as an entertainment presenter. With no degree, he taught himself everything, editing, reporting, producing. When he began covering climate change, it stopped being just another assignment. It was personal. His own family home would flood every rainy season. The more he uncovered, the more he realised the power of journalism to expose, to document, to push for better.

He became one of Gambia’s youngest national newsreaders and won Environmental Journalist of the Year. But Rahim knew there was more. In 2022, he packed up and moved to Scotland, ready to start all over again.

It was humbling to go from a national anchor to an intern at BBC Sport Scotland. But he embraced it, learning, observing, and telling stories, from Glasgow’s Black hair salons to female barbers breaking barriers and communities reclaiming their histories.

Today, Rahim is a multimedia journalist at STV News, Scotland’s most-watched news programme. The skills he taught himself in a garage are now his everyday tools. And the mission that carried him across continents has stayed the same, to make space for voices that are too often ignored.

He doesn’t know exactly what comes next. But he knows he will keep giving it everything. Because he remembers the boy who could barely speak, and he knows just how far courage can take you.