The Foundation for FUTURES sees young people as fundamental to questions surrounding global change. Such a focus is rooted in demographic trajectories impacting now on the world, and for the next few decades. Currently the world has the largest generation of young people in history, numbering some 1.2 billion people aged between 10 and 24. Of these 88% live in developing countries where they constitute a high proportion of the population. Africa, in particular, will see its population rise from its current 1.4 billion people to 2.6 billion by 2050, of which 830 million will be young people under 25, and representing a 70% rise on its current 580 million. However, without the appropriate education, training and leadership schemes for these surging numbers of young people, these staggering growth rates will put intolerable pressure on Government resources and acute stress on economic structures, employment and social cohesion, as well as an adverse impact on climate change.

In looking to the future and to supporting young people in their journey, FUTURES is keen to focus upon developing those essential abilities of adaptation, change and resilience, and crucially set within a moral and values-based framework though which young people might engage with the world and its global problems? Key to the promotion of an awareness of sustainability issues, social justice and inclusion, a sensitivity towards interfaith, intercultural diversity, and community wellbeing, is establishing the wider ethical prism through which they can understand and engage with an uncertain and rapidly changing world