We do not have to search hard for reasons to feel overwhelmed.

Almost one in five children on this planet now lives in a conflict-affected zone. Youth violence is one of the leading causes of death for people aged 15 to 29. In many countries a whole generation has grown up being told that they will never have the quality of life their parents had.

Violence, displacement, institutional breakdown and climate shocks are converging into a future that does not need small repairs. It needs reinvention.

Yet I keep asking myself and all of you a different question.

What if we get it right?

What if millions of young minds, equipped with powerful technology, grounded in real communities and bodies that know how to feel and heal, start to rewrite what leadership looks like when survival and radical imagination live in the same body?

AI is not arriving despite this crisis. It is arriving for this crisis. It equalizes access to tools in a new way. It does not automatically equalize access to guidance, capital, trust or institutions. That is where human architecture matters.

We are building it, and rather than continuing to rehearse the darkest futures, I invite you to sit with a different question: what would happen if we get it right?

I am sharing this from a place of deep gratitude and unfiltered wonder.

Five years ago, Moonshot was a wild idea. I was a choreographer trying to learn the language of philanthropy and systems change. I still remember the first time I was asked, “So what do you really need to build this?”

Two years later with my board we took a breath and I gathered my courage to ask the Avast Foundation to write a check for $600,000. It was the biggest number I had ever said out loud on behalf of our work.

I did not fully believe it would happen. I treated it as training. I would learn how to ask, how to explain, how to stand for a vision that did not exist yet.

They said yes.

Shane Ryan, the director of the Avast Foundation, and now one of our Moonshot mentors, introduced us to trust-based philanthropy, giving this huge sum on the basis of what we believed Moonshot could become. That gift allowed us to build the first versions of what you now know as the Moonshot Awards and Moonshot Camp. We established a youth board and learned on the fly. We co-designed with them and mentors and friends around a round table, not a hierarchy. We discovered what “inclusive co-design” means in practice: you do not just ask for advice, you share the pen.

In 2025, that early experiment finally started to look like a movement.

This was, without question, our most powerful year so far.
I believe it’s because we have remained true to the themes of trust and collaboration.

We served more young leaders than ever before. We invested more capital directly into youth-led ventures. We welcomed more partners, mentors, and allies who chose to trust our ideas with their time, their reputations, and their resources.

For the Moonshot Awards 2025, we received over five thousand applications from 139 countries. Twelve finalists stood on a stage in New York City and showed the world what proximate, youth-led innovation looks like when it is given the microphone.

Behind the scenes, something else shifted.
In 2024, at our first real gala, we set a goal to raise $100,000 and ended up at $450,000. I still remember our dear friend Andrea Piana, today a member of the board of directors, advising me with his inimitable Italian accent; “Yemi, don’t be afraid to ask. If you don't ask for it, you won’t get it.”

This year, everyone told me to be realistic. Instead, following Andrea’s advice, we decided to try to  triple last year’s result. I heard “too much” many times. Part of me agreed.

And in the end, we raised $1.45 million dollars.

This did not happen just by manifestation. It was strategy, months of community building, the hard work of our entire team, board, and many trusted advisors. It was deep analysis of who is in the room, the audacity to reach out to people from different new circles, and a willingness to learn to ask directly for what we really need to make this happen.

The reason I share the numbers is not to celebrate the money itself. It is because this result  shows the growing circle of people who believe that investing in young proximate leaders is one of the smartest returns on investment and most necessary bets for our shared future.

Our theory of change is radically simple. There is untapped potential in young people who are proximate to the world’s problems. Proximate means you are there. You smell the air. You know the names. You carry the cost of what you are trying to solve.

If young proximate leaders are given time, skills, resources, mentorship and community, they can deliver solutions that make life better now across all the Sustainable Development Goals and beyond them. When those leaders are supported in their inner life as much as their pitch deck, they do not just build ventures. They build themselves into the kind of humans who can carry power without losing integrity.

If you are in a place where you can support our mission financially, so we can bring more young proximate leaders into the program, HERE IS A LINK and a way to do it. 

A donation can feel like a simple transaction. With Moonshot, it becomes something deeper, the first step in your own Moonshot journey.

In 2026, there will be many opportunities to join us. You may meet us at a Moonshot Access event with our Moonshot Fellows  around the world. You may want to mentor brilliant and inspiring young leaders. Perhaps you and your family will join us at the Moonshot Camp in the Czech Republic or join the jury for Moonshot Awards 2026. 

Your donation of time, money, or energy will unlock new potential for our mission and for hundreds of young changemakers who are trying their best to move this world in the right direction for us all. 

So as you enter into the new year, try to create at least a little pocket of time to imagine what would happen if we get it right and remember that the hardest distance you’ll ever have to cross is the distance between your head and your heart.

I wish you a grounded, courageous 2026.
Thank you for being part of this journey. 

This is Yemi Akinyemi, from Moonshot Platform.