Annual Report 2025
Looking forward
From strategy to practice:
Refining our focus and approach in 2026 and beyond
2025 was a year of intensive reflection on how to sharpen our strategic focus, align our resources, and strengthen collaboration within Fondation Botnar and with our partners. In a rapidly changing world, marked by shrinking development funding and the increasing fragility of once broadly shared values, deepening our impact on young people’s wellbeing and rights is more important than ever.
In 2026 and over the coming years, we will sharpen our focus and strengthen our approach in the following areas:
Deeper engagement in focus countries
We are working more intentionally in our focus countries, guided by local communities and young people who know their contexts best, and adopting a more holistic approach that goes beyond individual sectors. This involves gaining a deeper understanding of the local context, prioritising geographic engagement informed by context-specific developments, and developing a better understanding of how and why change occurs in different settings.
Ecosystems for sustained change
We will cultivate locally grounded ecosystems* in which partners can implement and adapt initiatives over time. This creates more sustained, context-responsive, and systemic pathways to change.
Enhancing local collaboration through closer partnerships
At the heart of our approach is a commitment to locally rooted collaboration. Through this, we aim to enable more resilient and sustainable pathways to systemic change. This means working more closely with key partners in our focus countries to empower local actors and foster networks across the public and private sectors, civil society, academia, and with young people.
Enabling thematic synergies
Young people don’t experience education, health, digital access, or rights in isolation — these issues are deeply interconnected in how they live their lives. So, our four thematic areas will become more interconnected and mutually reinforcing. By working within defined geographic ecosystems, we aim to broaden collaboration across themes and enable more context-responsive approaches to young people’s wellbeing.
Thank you!
We are grateful to our partners and young people, with whom we work together in our shared commitment to realising our mission: to work with and for young people of all backgrounds, contributing to a world that supports their wellbeing and respects their rights.
*We understand ecosystems as networks of diverse actors—public, private, civil society, research, and youth—connected by a shared intent, and shaped by the relationships, structures, and processes that enable collaboration and sustained change.