About
Where the YES Challenge comes from
A model built on a simple, tested idea: trust young people first, and most of them will prove you right.
The origin
The YES Challenge grows out of the work of Ali Raza Khan and YES Network Pakistan, where the trust-first model was developed and tested at scale: over 500,000 young people engaged across more than a thousand institutions over the years. That body of work is the origin and the evidence base for everything here.
The thinking
The idea is set out in Ali Raza Khan's book on the trust-first model: rather than asking young people to earn trust before anyone will invest in them, give a small amount of trust and capital first, and let them show what they can do. When an institution organises itself around that principle, it becomes what we call a Changemaker Hub.
Who's behind it
The YES Challenge is stewarded by the YES Founders Foundation gUG (haftungsbeschränkt), a German non-profit. Its role is to carry the model into new institutions and countries, document the results honestly, and make the tools freely available. It does not put its own brand in front of the young people and local teams doing the work.
Where it's working
Beyond Pakistan, the model has been run by local teams in Zimbabwe (the Chitungwiza Hub, delivered by The Work Under The Tree Trust) and tested in Berlin, among others. Thecase studies document those results as they come in, with proven results kept distinct from early, tentative ones, to a donor-reporting standard.