Fariah Laikipian is a Rotary Peace Fellow from the University of Bradford working on an applied field placement with Islamic Relief’s advocacy team. Originally from Kenya, Fariah reflects on life as a young humanitarian and finding a voice between worlds.

In one of my classes during my master’s programme in Bradford, I sat with students from every part of the world. One afternoon we had a heated debate on a critical development and humanitarian crisis surrounding climate change. This session made me wonder; who gets to define a humanitarian crisis, whose voice is heard, and whose is missing?

Almost everyone at that table had either lived through a crisis like the ones we debated, or worked to change one back home, while some were hearing some of these issues for the first time

That room taught me something no lecture could. Humanitarianism is not only about responding to emergencies. It is about the different ways people understand the same reality.

Over the past 5 years I have moved from Kenya to the United States, Iceland, and now to England. Each move changed more than my address. It changed how I heard people talk about my country, my continent and its challenges, and it changed how I answered back.

Connecting research with experience

The most valuable thing a young person in the diaspora can do is easy to miss. We move between worlds. We sit in a policy forum one week and a community project the next, bringing the realities of one into the conversations happening in the other.

We connect research with lived experience, and local realities with global decisions. We translate more than language. We translate perspective.

In my classes, and in the places my studies have taken me, I have met people my age doing this quietly and doing it well. A sustainability engineer from Colombia pushing for zero emissions. A founder of a non-governmental organization from Nigeria backing young women in politics. An economist from Bolivia advocating for inclusive economic policies. A humanitarian in Pakistan supporting victims of floods. An education specialist from Afghanistan fighting for girls to stay in school.

This work rarely reaches the headlines, but it changes lives.

Resilience is not the goal

People praise us for resilience, for adapting and carrying on. But resilience is what you fall back on when systems let you down. The better question is what helps young people thrive.

The sector has worked hard to give young people a seat at the table. The harder step is trusting us once we are there, with real responsibility and respect for what we know from lived our experience.

We often celebrate young people for their resilience: their ability to adapt, persevere and keep finding solutions. But perhaps the next question is what enables young people to not simply to cope, but to thrive.

The humanitarian sector has created important spaces for youth participation; the opportunity now is to deepen that participation through trust, responsibility and recognition of what young people bring from their lived experiences.

Over the coming weeks I will do exactly that. With Islamic Relief in Iraq, I am looking at how climate finance reaches the women who need it most in the south of the country, and where it gets stuck on the way. A great deal is promised at the national level. Far less survives the journey to a woman farming through drought in Basra or Thi Qar in Iraq.

I also want to understand what faith-based giving, such as zakat and waqf (forms of Islamic giving) could compliment these systems, and how it might close the gap between formal systems and the lives people lead.

This summer, I have experienced what that can look like at Islamic Relief, contributing to research and advocacy while learning how a global humanitarian organisation connects policy with community realities. One part of this has taken me deeper into an issue I care about: climate justice. Working with Islamic Relief’s Iraq team, I am researching how women in climate-stressed communities experience and access climate adaptation support; whether they know about it, understand it, can access it and have a voice in shaping the solutions it funds. I am also exploring how faith-based financing including zakat and waqf might complement formal climate finance mechanisms.

For me, it brings an earlier question to life: whose voice reaches the rooms where decisions are made? The people closest to the challenges should also be part of shaping the solutions. My role gives me a small opportunity to help connect those conversations and to learn from both sides.

So, this International Youth Day, I hope we can move past celebrating what young people might one day become and start backing what they are already doing. The next step is simple. Trust young people enough to help shape what comes next. Different contexts may shape how we show up, but our aspiration to make a difference is often the same.

Read more about Islamic Relief’s work on climate and communities.