The Summer 2026 issue of Alliance magazine, one of the world’s leading philanthropic journals, asks a question the sector has long avoided: whose voices actually count?
Hope and Homes for Children’s Victoria Olarte and Stephen Ucembe guest edited the special feature on youth, philanthropy, and radical accountability. Here’s what they found.
Stephen Ucembe is a lived experience professional; he grew up in an orphanage on the outskirts of Nairobi. He was placed there at about the age of five. Even as a child, something felt wrong and it’s a feeling he can now articulate plainly – that he was expected to be seen, but not to be heard.
That experience went on to shape his path into social work and self-advocacy. It led him to co-found one of the first networks of young people with lived care experience in Africa, the Kenya Society of Care Leavers. And it is this experience he brings to his role today as Hope and Homes for Children’s regional advocacy manager and Kenya representative.
Together with Victoria Olarte, HHC’s care reform specialist and strategic research lead, Stephen has guest edited the Summer 2026 issue of Alliance magazine under the theme of youth and philanthropy: rethinking power and accountability for the next generation.
And they didn’t do it alone. The issue was shaped from the inside by two youth guest editors: Nombulelo Mbangula and Siphosihle Precious Diale, both members of Our Voices Matter (OVM) our growing global movement of 50 young people active across Bulgaria, Moldova, Romania, Rwanda, South Africa, and Ukraine.
Earlier this year, OVM launched its Charter: a youth-led commitment to accountability, participation, and change, through which senior HHC leaders pledged to embed youth voice into decision-making at every level. Nombulelo, 18, from South Africa, is passionate about youth development and mental health. Siphosihle, 21, also South African, brings creativity and community to everything she does. Their involvement in this issue isn’t a gesture toward the theme. It is the theme.
It’s a theme that couldn’t matter more. And we’re proud that Hope and Homes for Children is at its centre.
Youth, philanthropy, and accountability: what the Alliance special feature covers
The Summer 2026 Alliance special feature asks what changes when young people have genuine power in the decisions that shape their lives and, importantly, what it costs when they don’t.
Almost half the world’s population is under 25. These are the lives most affected by forced migration, deepening inequality, climate collapse, and conflict. Yet in philanthropic structures, young people are overwhelmingly treated as beneficiaries who are funded for and not funded with. Their insights are treated as supplementary to good giving, rather than essential to it.
The feature explores what radical accountability looks like in practice. Not young people invited into rooms where decisions have already been made. Not stories extracted and then ignored. But genuine co-authorship where the question shifts from “how do we improve this system?” to “why does this system exist at all?”
Alongside pieces from our own contributors, the issue brings in perspectives from care-experienced young people in Nepal, practitioners working on care reform in Moldova and South Africa, youth-led climate movements across Africa, and young philanthropic fellows from Zimbabwe, Kenya, Slovakia, Peru, and Thailand. There are also contributions on education access, the role of play in humanitarian settings, and what a legal right to the future might look like for the next generation.
It also looks honestly at what stands in the way. Philanthropic architecture, much of it built on colonial foundations, is oriented upward toward donors and institutions rather than toward the people whose lives the funding shapes. Changing that is a different kind of task than simply adding a youth seat to a committee. This is a topic explored in a conversation between philanthropist, James Amos, Nombulelo Mbangula and Birendra Shahi – what will it take for donors to shift power and what do young people want?
Why philanthropy is still funding orphanages and how to stop
Central to the feature is a hard look at one of the most persistent failures of philanthropic giving: the continued funding of orphanages and institutional care for children.
5.4 million children are living in orphanages around the world. The evidence of what that does to them is unequivocal. Orphanages expose children to significantly elevated risks of violence, neglect, exploitation, and trafficking and the harm is worst for the youngest children.
Yet 80% of children in orphanages are not orphans. They have at least one living parent or family member who could care for them, with the right support. They are not waiting for a donor. They are waiting for a system to change.
The feature examines how and why philanthropy has kept this system running, what the orphanage economy actually is, and what it looks like when donors choose differently. It includes powerful reflections from practitioners working on the frontlines of care reform, as well as from care-experienced young people who have lived inside the system and are now organising to dismantle it.
The $124 trillion opportunity: philanthropy accountability and the next generation of donors
As Stephen and Victoria note, the direction of travel is clear. The 2025 Global Charter for Children’s Care Reform was shaped by the testimony of care-experienced young people. 196 countries have committed to phasing out orphanages. The political foundation for change is in place.
What is also on the horizon is an intergenerational wealth transfer that will reshape who gives, and how. By 2048, an estimated $124 trillion is predicted to change hands in the US alone. The philanthropic culture that emerges from that transfer is not yet written.
That is precisely the opportunity. Where governments are unwilling to drive change, philanthropy has both the power and the responsibility to model something different to set a pace and a precedent in genuine accountability to children and young people.
Read the magazine and find out how you can help
The Summer 2026 issue of Alliance magazine is available now. The special feature includes pieces by contributors from Moldova, South Africa, Nepal, Kenya, and beyond — exploring the orphanage economy, youth-led advocacy, and what accountability to children looks like in practice.
Read more at alliancemagazine.org
If this issue moves you to act, the most direct thing a philanthropist can do is invest in organisations working to transform these systems, not just fund individual children, but dismantle the conditions that harm millions.
For donors holding capital in a Donor Advised Fund (DAF), making a grant recommendation to Hope and Homes for Children is straightforward. Since 1994, we have been working to bring children Back to Family in more countries, and for longer, than any other organisation in this field. We would be glad to tell you more.
If you are a foundation and would like to discuss our work in more detail, please email Sherri Feghali. To find out more about how philanthropic support can help end orphanages and change the future for millions of children get in touch with Liza Kendall, Head of Strategic Philanthropy.
