About Kectil
The Kectil Program, a collaboration with the Malmar Knowles Family Foundation, is committed to unlocking the leadership potential of young people in developing countries. The Kectil Global Youth Index is its public data arm: the permanent home for what the youth we work with are actually saying.
Our mission
Kectil was founded on a simple observation: talented young people in developing countries rarely lack drive, creativity, or ideas — they lack networks. They lack the mentors, the first opportunities, and the peer communities that compound into careers.
The Kectil Program pairs high-potential youth with mentors, structured learning, and a lasting alumni community. The Kectil Global Youth Index grew out of that work. It captures, at a global scale, what the Kectil Program has always heard at close range: youth speaking with unusual clarity about what they need, and what they are ready to build.
How Kectil works
Each pillar feeds the next. The Program produces alumni. Alumni produce voices. Voices become the Index. The Index brings more Program applicants.
A mentorship and leadership-development program for high-potential youth in developing countries, with a lasting alumni community.
The annual survey behind the Index: 2,252 respondents in 2025 and 2,706 in 2026, with approved open-text responses published as youth voices.
The community where Kectil alumni stay in touch, find mentors, and build careers — separate from the public Index.
The public data platform you're on now. Free, open, citable, and designed as the permanent home for the Kectil Youth Speak findings.
What we believe
We listen first. The Index exists to carry what survey respondents actually said — in their own words wherever possible.
We build things meant to last a decade, not a news cycle. Permanent URLs, versioned methodology, and a private alumni network that outlives any given program year.
Optimism is not our brand — evidence is. When we say youth are ready to lead, we publish the data that says so.
Go deeper
The Kectil Global Youth Index is the data arm. The Program is the on-the-ground work that generates the voices, relationships, and community context the Index reports on.
