USAID Launches Global Leadership and Education Advancing Development Initiative

Today, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) announced the Global Leadership and Education Advancing Development (Global LEAD) Initiative, which supports the capacity and commitment of emerging young leaders to become partners in building self-reliant communities.

To support Global LEAD, USAID launched YouthLead(link is external) to connect thousands of young change-makers around the world to resources and networks, and YouthPower(link is external) to share programmatic tools and learning with partners.

Global LEAD aims to mobilize one million young leaders over the next five years to guide their countries’ development on issues of education, civic engagement, and leadership development. As USAID joins other organizations around the world in celebrating International Youth Day, this Agency-wide initiative reiterates USAID’s role as a leader in international youth development.

Global LEAD builds on USAID’s decades of work with young change-makers, higher-education institutions, and faith-based organizations by engaging young people as partners in their own country’s development. At the heart of Global LEAD is USAID’s New Partnerships Initiative (NPI), which works with local, new, and underutilized youth-led and youth-serving organizations to accelerate progress in partner countries on the Journey to Self-Reliance.

Young people’s talent, creativity and passion will be key to responding to, and recovering from, COVID-19. To help combat wide-spread disinformation around COVID-19, Global LEAD will enlist young digital leaders’ social-media influence to help communicate accurate information on how people can stay safe.

Last year alone, USAID trained more than 320,000 young people to improve their job skills and civic engagement. Through continued partnerships and new ones, USAID’s collective work in implementing Global LEAD will advance global youth development throughout the world.