قصصنا. اعرفوا المزيد حول عملنا لتحقيق أهداف التنمية المستدامة

“Give a young person a real problem, a limited budget, three months and the freedom to experiment,” says Julia Assi, a university student from South Lebanon and one of 23 newly selected Ambassadors of Change in the UN Global Compact Network Lebanon’s SDG Brain Lab. “Lebanon does not need thousands of perfect successes. It needs thousands of young people to have the opportunity to test thousands of ideas.”It is a simple ask, and a demanding one. This August, as Lebanon marked International Youth Day, that ask sat at the center of two UN initiatives designed to do exactly what young people like Julia are calling for: create space for youth not just to be heard, but to act.Still Here. Still Building.The first was a digital campaign built around a single idea: despite years of economic hardship, conflicts, displacement and uncertainty, young people across Lebanon are still here, and still building. Under the hashtag #StillHereStillBuilding, more than 25 young women and men from across Lebanon recorded short videos sharing what keeps them going, their motivations, their hopes for Lebanon, the ways they are already contributing to their communities amid the subsequent crises. The digital campaign was launched with video messages by the United Nations Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator Imran Riza and Lebanon's Minister of Youth and Sports, Dr. Nora Bayrakdarian. Riza’s message to young people was direct: "Determination alone is not enough. Young people need opportunities: quality education, decent jobs, safe spaces and a real voice in shaping their future."  Minister Bayrakdarian, in turn, called on young people to keep dreaming, innovating and volunteering, describing “youth not only as Lebanon's future but as a driving force shaping its present.” (Check her video message here).The digital campaign quickly gained traction across UN Lebanon's social media platforms, generating a total reach of 610,000 and significantly increasing engagement with the hashtag around International Youth Day, observed on 12 August. The campaign also reached a wider public audience through state-owned Télé Liban's morning show “A7la Saba7” (Best Morning), where UN Youth Taskforce Co-Chair Abeer Abi Zaki spoke about the campaign and the young people behind it.What came through in the videos was not a single message, but a shared thread: young people describing hope, resilience and a determination to keep contributing to Lebanon's future, on their own terms.  [Here are selected videos by Youth joining the UN Lebanon #StillHereStillBuilding Campaign: Video by "Hadis Chabeb"; Video by Maroun Abi Zeid and Video by Zahraa Bazzi.] From Ideas to ActionThat same spirit carried into a second initiative a few days later: one designed to move beyond messaging and into dialogue. On 20 August, UN Lebanon and the UN Global Compact Network Lebanon brought together 23 newly selected SDG Brain Lab Ambassadors of Change for a half-day event at UN House, built around a 45-minute conversation with the UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator himself. The premise was straightforward: rather than a briefing or induction session, the Ambassadors would set the agenda. Their reflections on what it actually takes to move an idea into action in Lebanon today would shape everything that followed. Over the next year, as part of their assigned mandate, they will design and implement community initiatives that advance recovery and development efforts, bring change to their own communities, support the local implementation of the 2030 Agenda, and embed sustainability in the environments in which they live.At the heart of this mandate is the belief that meaningful change is built through collective action. As Deenah Fakhoury puts it: “Change rarely comes from one person doing everything. It comes when many people decide to do something.” It is this spirit of shared responsibility that the Ambassadors are expected to carry into their communities, turning individual actions into collective progress. An Honest Conversation about What It Takes to Create ChangeThe dialogue did not shy away from the obstacles young people face and the difficulty of achieving the aspired change. Zeina, one of the Ambassadors, described the barriers young people face bluntly: for many, simply "securing a decent life" through work, tuition fees, and transportation costs leaves little room to pursue an idea. She herself works two jobs and cancelled three work commitments to attend the UN-GCNL dialogue. Legal and logistical hurdles, she added, often feel like repeatedly "hitting a wall." Others pushed back against the instinct to expect instant results. Change takes patience, said Hanine Faraj, “young people sometimes need to "plant the seeds" before results follow.” And where change does need to happen quickly, several Ambassadors argued it has to be structural: "long-term change cannot depend exclusively on trust and goodwill," said George Daou, calling for sustainability and youth participation to be embedded in law and regulation, not left to voluntary effort. Across the conversation, a common thread emerged: young people in Lebanon are not short on ideas or motivation. What they lack is space, time, resources, institutional trust, to act on them. The RC/HC's role in the dialogue was less to answer than to listen and probe further, returning repeatedly to one idea: that “hope, even in difficult circumstances, is what keeps both young people and institutions working toward a shared future, and that reinforcing it matters for Lebanon's social cohesion as much as for its recovery.” From Conversation to CommitmentThe dialogue did not end in discussion alone. Each Ambassador was invited to complete a personal pledge: "I'm still here. Still building. Still committed to…", submitted through a Digital Pledge Wall and carried forward as a personal commitment for their one-year mandate.  One Ambassador committed to mental health awareness in her community, pointing to persistent stigma in rural areas and the belief that "there is no health without mental health." Others pledged around themes ranging from environmental action to community leadership, each one a starting point for the initiatives Ambassadors will now design and implement over the coming year as part of their mandate. Building, TogetherTwo youth-centered initiatives, one message: young people in Lebanon are not waiting for change to come. They already know what stands in its way, what would unlock it, and where they believe they can make the biggest difference themselves.What the "Still Here. Still Building" campaign and the Ambassadors of Change dialogue show isn't that these young people needed convincing to act. It's that once given a genuine space to speak, and to be heard by those with the power to respond, they were ready to turn that space into commitment, and commitment into action.None of this makes the challenges any easier, or suggests resilience alone is enough. It shows something simpler: young people are here, they have ideas, and they're ready to act when given trust, partnerships and opportunities to do so.As Lebanon looks toward recovery, meaningful youth participation means more than listening. It means creating pathways for young people's ideas to be tested, their voices to be heard, and their leadership to shape what comes next.For the 23 Ambassadors of Change, that next chapter is already underway: a one-year journey from dialogue, to commitment, to action. Watch a wrap-up video of the event hosting the 23 Ambassadors of Change, produced by UNSCOL public information assistant Hala Feghaly: