Meet 10 Young Diaspora Leaders who are impacting their communities with unique projects 

Young diaspora leaders impacting the world today! 

The Young Diaspora Leaders initiative was created to highlight extraordinary young diasporas with powerful ideals and to direct attention to the contributions they carry out from the point of view of their migration experiences. IOM hopes to shed light on how Young Diaspora Leaders have the capacity to adapt to new contexts and environments with ease while using their skills, backgrounds, and talents to become agents of change helping both their communities or origin and residence. 

Diasporas support their communities in their homelands and host lands, but do you know what inspires them, what do they hope to accomplish by 2030, and how do they connect with their families and friends back home? These are some of the questions answered by 10 Young Diaspora Leaders in the recently launched initiative by the IOM.  

The younger generation of diasporas has positive impacts in the cities where they come from and live in, and over the last few years, the youth have gained prominence attracting attention in many areas including politics, science, innovation, and most recently climate change. Migration is a unique field where diasporas are contributing to solutions to health issues, gender equality, and climate action advocacy. We believe that many of the issues faced in our world are in the mind of migrants and diasporas because even when they move to other places, they do not forget what needs to be done and they decide to stand at the forefront of the topics creating solutions and executing their ideas.  

The resilience demonstrated by the youth is remarkable and IOM is pleased to see the youth involved and actively questioning the role and actions of governments, organizations, and individuals across the world. The world needs younger, brave, engaged, driven, leaders whilst decision-makers need to recognize them as committed actors who are ready to engage in life-changing programs. Knowing this and being aware that the world today has more than 250 million migrants, it is imperative to have young diasporas speaking from their migration experience to lead, inspire and empower other young diasporas throughout the world. 

Learn more about the Young Diaspora Leaders Initiative here 

For more information, please contact:  
In Geneva: 
Larisa Lara, Transnational Communities and Digital Commnications Officer lalara@iom.int, or Veronica Uribe-Kessler, Consultant Diaspora Team  veuribekessl@iom.int