Youth Leadership for Emerging Future program building strong communities ready for the challenges of tomorrow

We cannot predict the future or plan for unexpected events, but we can mitigate and prepare. Youth Leadership for Emerging Future program is the answer to the rapid pace of change and the complexity of interconnected crises. Ashoka, Save the Children and the Humanitarian Leadership Academy came together to prepare young leaders for challenges the future will bring.  

Empowering local leaders

We believe that these challenges can be approached and eased only collectively and that mutual dialogue and sharing between experience holders and young leaders. At the same time young leaders need to be heard and involved in decision-making. This project is empowering their agency and supporting the work they do for the good of all.

“We recognize that young people play a vital and incredibly important role in crisis response by providing support to those in need and facilitating collaborative efforts for the common good during crises. The humanitarian sector needs to include a younger generation of humanitarians to response and provide conditions for their innovative ideas and solutions to address the complexities of local and global crises” says Piotr Kołodziej, Humanitarian Leadership Academi Regional Lead in eastern Europe.

“As the HLA we adopt a transformational response and progressive localization approach, and strengthening the capacity of the young leaders is a vital step to achieving this” he adds.

“There are two aspects of this program that excite me the most: first is empowering the voice of young leaders and equipping them with the tools to be ready for what the future will bring. The second is that humanitarian action must go beyond the basic needs and stability of livelihood, it must provide assistance in a way to empower everyone to create change, to build an ‘Everyone a changemaker’ world” says Agnieszka Płoska from Ashoka.

Changemaker journeys

40 young leaders from Ukraine, Poland, Czechia and Slovakia were chosen to be part of the Youth Leadership for Emerging Future program. The first step was to meet offline in Warsaw and Prague. The meetings were full of inspirational sessions and stories shared by Ashoka Fellows. During the study visits, the young leaders had the opportunity to see how social innovators create systemic change. There was time to share the personal changemaker journeys that turned out to be truly connecting moments. There was room to exchange ideas and experiences. Participants even formed their first collaborations based on shared ideas.

These actions aim to strengthen local capacity to respond to humanitarian needs, popularize the knowledge to respond to humanitarian and social needs by mutual learning and strengthening leaders.  

“So far, I feel very energized and motivated by the people and their stories. I feel also excited about the upcoming cooperation and the project that we're going to work on. This should be a great opportunity for us to make strong international connections” says Maria Andruchiw, cultural and social activist, one of the program participants.

International network of young changemakers

After this emotional time offline, there is now time to dive deeper into the process online. Young Leaders, assisted by experienced facilitators will learn how to recognize own purpose and problem they want to solve, will work on crisis risk reduction and management cycle, will learn how to build allyships and teams of teams and how to take care of self and others in a changemaking journey. This process is focused around multistakeholder collaboration and will lead to creating new solutions that will be implemented by young leaders with the grant support of Youth Leadership for Emerging Future.

“I'm looking for new knowledge and experience, meetings with active people, and the possibility to unite for a powerful idea which will serve the common good. My team wanted to create a community of active young people who care for our future, look for ways to improve social systems and have a positive impact on the world” says Vitalina Petrova from Unity Foundation, program participant.

No leader in this group was chosen by chance – every single person has an inspiring story to share and a motivation to make a change and respond to the humanitarian and social crisis. “We are from different countries, but we share similar stories” they share as feedback after the meetings, adding “Overcoming difficulties helps you see the strength in yourself and encourages you to share it with others”.