Restless Development conducted its Annual Young Leaders survey with current volunteers and alumni who have volunteered with us and led our work within 2025.
Our Annual Young Leaders Survey is conducted every year to gain feedback from our young leaders on their experience with us. The Annual Young Leaders survey 2025 had 500 responses from both current and alumni young leaders engaged through our seven hubs and remotely through global projects and the UK satellite. It was completed by all types of young leaders, from peer educators delivering activities in communities to advocates, researchers, campaigners, mobilisers, monitors and communicators.
This report is intended to provide an overview of how young leaders across the agency have experienced working with Restless Development and outlines some actionable suggestions and recommendations to improve their engagement in the future.
The impact of volunteering with Restless Development
Volunteering with Restless Development has created an impact on both young people and the communities they worked with, as can be seen from the following examples:
- Young leaders have developed personal skills such as leadership, communication, facilitation, research, problem-solving skills and confidence, which enabled them to speak up on issues affecting their lives and communities.
- Volunteering has contributed to career pathways, with many young leaders accessing employment, further education, or leadership roles.
- Improved adolescent access to health services and SRHR information through peer education and youth-friendly spaces; positive and sustained behavior change among adolescents and community members, including reduced early marriage, teenage pregnancy, drug abuse, and stigma.
- Increased school re-enrollment among adolescents who had dropped out.
- Perspectives of young people have meaningfully informed program design, implementation, and evaluation and our partners have benefited from youth-led research and used it for advocacy.
- Partners recognized young people as leaders and change agents.
Recommendations and suggestions:
- Need to establish and formalize an alumni network to maintain long-term engagement with former volunteers and young leaders.
- Need to conduct regular feedback and review sessions with young people to support learning, strengthen programme quality, and help volunteers reflect on achievements, challenges, and areas for improvement in a structured and supportive manner.
- Restless Development may consider supporting transitions from volunteering to employability by integrating sessions on career guidance, CV development, professional communication, leadership pathways and navigating the job market, particularly for recent graduates.
- Restless Development needs to increase financial, stipend, and resource support and ensure timely disbursement of funds.
- Young leaders expressed the need for stronger recognition of their work, emotional and wellbeing support, and activities that foster connection and team bonding.
- Need to introduce cross-learning and exposure opportunities for young leaders both virtual and in-person—to support peer learning, innovation, and the sharing of best practices.
Interested to learn more about the experiences of young people working with us?
