I’m Magid, the facilitator of Choose Love’s new GLORY programme, and I’ve seen first-hand how crucial it is to shift power to those who know displacement from lived experience. For too long, the people making decisions about how to help young displaced people have been created miles away, by people with no knowledge of what it’s really like to flee your home. At Choose Love, we’ve always been focused on putting that decision-making into the hands of those who have experienced it.
That’s why we’re excited to kickstart GLORY: Global Leadership & Organising by Refugee Youth (GLORY). Over two years, we’ll been working with eleven young leaders around the world, aged eighteen to twenty-five, who have all been forcibly displaced from their homes and refuse to be defined by it.
GLORY was created because solutions work best when the people affected can design them. Too many programmes aimed at refugees still treat youth as recipients rather than architects.
Our programme turns that logic inside out. Each member is receiving tailored coaching in community organising, digital storytelling, financial management, and advocacy; we also provide them with a modest budget to help them bring to life ideas to support their communities.
Our members will decide which problems to tackle, both the immediate on-the-ground challenges they encounter in their own communities as well as the broader barriers that refugee youth currently face. Whether that means launching a mental-health peer network, piloting a sports-for-inclusion scheme or experimenting with new ways to document lived experience. In close collaboration with our Head of Safeguarding, we ensure that every idea passes through clear safeguards that make sure everyone is safe and supported. By combining youth-led decision-making with this structured safety net, we aim to foster real structural change that can make a lasting difference.
Our online sessions take place every few weeks and are set up so that all eleven members in the cohort can take part, no matter where they are in the world. Over the two-year journey, the cohort will refine their ideas, learn to measure impact, and build a cross-border network of allies who understand both the urgency and the nuance of forced displacement.
GLORY is made up of eleven incredible young people, each with their own ambitions. To give you a flavour of what could emerge, one member hopes to use his filmmaking skills and narrative framing to replace crisis-driven headlines with films that invite genuine partnership.
Another person intends to hone her community-organising know-how so she can turn workshops into neighbourhood projects that remain culturally rooted.
A third participant, passionate about mental health, is looking to draft a trauma-informed social enterprise model that pairs peer support with solid business practice.
These aspirations show the range of directions GLORY initiatives may take.
Just imagine what the world could look like if these young people are given the tools to make their ambitions reality. We’re only at the beginning of this journey, and we’d love you to walk it with us.
Follow our progress on Choose Love’s channels, share the stories we amplify, and if you spot an opportunity to collaborate or lend support, please get in touch. The future they imagine is already taking shape; together, we can give it the resources to thrive.
