Why Youth Leadership?
Young people who have grown up in displacement have navigated complexity, uncertainty and responsibility that most of their peers elsewhere have never faced. Many are already informal leaders in their communities: organising, mediating, supporting. What they lack is the formal recognition, the structured skills and the platform to take that leadership further.
Refugee Horizons' Youth Leadership programme is built on that reality. We do not arrive with a leadership curriculum designed elsewhere and delivered here. We start with the young people who are already leading and build the skills, structures and opportunities around them.
Particular focus is placed on young women and girls, who face additional barriers to leadership in displacement contexts and whose leadership, when supported, has the greatest multiplier effect on families and communities.
Structured training, peer platforms and community initiatives that turn informal leadership into recognised, effective leadership.
Structured sessions covering communication, conflict resolution, financial literacy, community organising and personal development. Skills that are directly applicable in the community and in any future employment or entrepreneurship context.
Structured forums where young people can raise issues, propose solutions and advocate for change within the programme, within the community and with external stakeholders. Voice is not a side benefit of leadership training. It is the point.
By Year 5, we are working toward 10+ youth-led community initiatives launched by programme graduates: projects designed, led and delivered by young people in Kirehe District, with Refugee Horizons providing mentorship and resources.
Young women and girls face compounded barriers in displacement contexts: to education, to economic participation, to leadership. Our programme actively creates space for their leadership, with dedicated sessions, mentorship from women leaders and pathways into the broader Refugee Horizons programme network.
Connected to the Whole Model
Youth leadership is not a standalone programme. It is the connective tissue of the whole Refugee Horizons model. The peer mentors in Mahama: The House of Talents are youth leadership graduates. The women running businesses after Itetero are applying the financial literacy and confidence they built in life-skills training. The entrepreneurs in our livelihoods programme are the young people who first found their voice in a youth forum.
Leadership development is what turns individual programme outcomes into community-wide change.
Our 5-Year Goals (2026 to 2031)
By 2031, we are working toward 200+ youth completing structured leadership and life-skills training, with at least 10 youth-led community initiatives launched by programme graduates in Kirehe District.
Support Youth LeadershipYouth leadership connects to every part of our model, from sport and talent to livelihoods and community protection.
All ProgrammesYour donation funds leadership training, youth forums and the community initiatives that young people in Kirehe District are ready to lead.
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