Introduction

Every year on August 12, the world illuminates the strength, passion, and potential of its youth through International Youth Day (IYD)—a day dedicated to recognising the invaluable contributions of young people and advocating for their empowerment. For 2025, the United Nations has announced the theme: “Local Youth Actions for the SDGs and Beyond.” This theme champions the vital role youth play in translating global goals—the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)—into meaningful, community-focused action

As the Commonwealth Secretariat highlights, this year also marks 10 years since the adoption of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, reinforcing the importance of youth-driven efforts in advancing this global promise. 

LIFE Legacy and Youth-led Actions

Paradigm Initiative celebrates IYD 2025 through inspiring success stories from our flagship digital inclusion programme, LIFE(Life Skills, ICTs, Financial Readiness, and Entrepreneurship) Legacy. This programme aims to empower underserved African youth with digital skills and entrepreneurial opportunities. It is currently being implemented in 12 African countries. Over 150,000 young people have benefited from it since it started in a slum community in Lagos, Nigeria, in 2007.

LIFE Legacy embodies the IYD 2025 theme—where youth take local action that resonates with global goals (No Poverty, Quality Education, Gender Equality, Decent Work and Economic Growth and Reduced Inequality) in the following ways:

• Skill-building & autonomy: Training youth in digital and life skills fosters economic inclusion and self-reliance.
• Community partnerships: Through partnerships with Community-Based Organisations (CBOs), the model scales affordably and sustainably.
• Empowerment of girls: Its Targeted programmes, like the LIFE training, digital readiness workshops and LIFE@School, ensure that girls are equipped for future success.
• Innovation rooted in real needs: Youth from the programme are building community solutions. For example, beneficiaries from Kibera, Nairobi, Kenya building a water-payment system demonstrate how community insights lead to meaningful solutions.

Spotlight on Youth-Led Action

Over the past 18 years, more than 50% of the LIFE Legacy programme beneficiaries have gone from indigent backgrounds that denied them access to opportunities to securing livelihood improvement opportunities for themselves and initiating and leading various projects that are helping to change the stories of other young people in their communities.

Wisdom Kalu from Aba, Nigeria, a son of two indigent parents, came in contact with LIFE Legacy programme in 2014 and had the opportunity to use a computer for the first time. At the end of his training period, he used the skills acquired during the training to start looking for opportunities online. This led to his getting a fully funded scholarship to study overseas. This opportunity did not make Wisdom forget his community, as he has returned now and is helping other indigent young people in the community to secure life-changing opportunities outside the community, thereby improving the number of young people being pulled out of poverty.

Grace Ayuma, a LIFE Legacy beneficiary from Kibera, Kenya, until coming in contact with the programme in 2023, sees a computer as magic, as she has never touched one. With the help of the skills she got at the training, she has now grown to become a full-stack software developer. In her words, “ Now I teach what I once feared. I work with young girls and women helping them to discover the power of digital skills, the confidence to try and the courage to keep going – even when the world doubts them”

Alphonce Ouma started as a student of the LIFE Legacy training program in Kibera, Kenya, came back as a facilitator, and has grown today to become the centre manager at Gonline Africa, where he was once a trainee, contributing to the centre’s continuous training of other young people in the community.

Why It Resonates

The many success stories PIN has noted and untold are a testament that localising the SDGs through programmes like the LIFE Legacy is empowering youths towards better livelihoods.Young people, deeply embedded in their communities, offer fresh insights and resilience, making them powerful agents of progress. Supporting their empowerment and leadership propels the SDGs and builds communities grounded in sustainability, fairness, and innovation.

Conclusion

In commemoration of  IYD, PIN urges governments and other relevant stakeholders to join hands in supporting initiatives that empower youth to take action towards achieving quality education, gender equality, decent work and economic growth and reducing inequality by helping to replicate such local youth-inclusive initiatives and digital training models.