Annual Reports – Zambia

Annual Report 2025

In 2025, we continued to demonstrate what is possible when young people are trusted, supported, and given the space to lead. Throughout the year, we worked alongside young people and communities to strengthen youth leadership, amplify young voices, improve access to opportunities and services, and influence decisions that affect their lives. Despite a challenging social, economic, and funding environment, young people continued to organise, advocate, innovate, and lead change in their communities, strengthening access to sexual and reproductive health services, education and livelihoods, and holding decision-makers accountable through governance and voice.

The report backs our work with clear numbers. In 2025, we reached 36,975 young people across 49 districts, working alongside 1,153 volunteers, 73 community, religious and civic leaders, and 51 members of staff. Across our 12 projects. It was a year of Youth Power in action, young people leading, communities responding, and us creating the spaces, connections, and support needed for that leadership to thrive.

Annual Report 2024

In 2024, Restless Development Zambia set out to prove something simple: youth leadership works — when it is real, supported, and respected. Our Annual Report reflects a year in which young people were not only invited to the table, but were actively leading conversations, decisions, and change, while we stayed accountable to communities and kept learning as we went. 

The report also puts clear numbers behind that story. In 2024 we worked alongside 65 partners and organisations across 13 programmes and allied activities, trained 525 young leaders, and those young leaders went on to engage and support 30,169 young people in communities around the country. 

Annual Report 2023

In 2023, we didn’t just “work with” young people in Zambia — we backed them to lead. Our Annual Report captures how we trained, mentored and connected young leaders to tackle the issues they told us matter most, while pushing for more inclusive, gender-transformative programming. 

Across the year, we operated in 51 districts and reached 42,000+ people, focusing our efforts on four priority areas: Education & Livelihoods, Sexual Reproductive Health & Rights, Voice & Governance, and Climate Justice. 

This report is a practical snapshot of what we delivered, what we learned, and how we strengthened youth-led change in line with Zambia’s national development priorities.

Annual Report 2022

In 2022, we pushed beyond “working with” young people — we backed them to lead, and we focused on shifting power to the communities we serve. 

We supported inclusive, gender-transformative work across ASRHR, life skills and financial literacy, with a deliberate focus on young people most at risk — including young girls affected by sexual gender-based violence and young people living with disabilities. 

And we strengthened youth-led accountability by training young people to generate evidence and engage decision-makers directly, while partnering with 15 youth-led and youth-focused organisations to amplify young people’s voices. 

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