This report presents the findings of the #ChangeTheCode (CTC) Campaign, a youth-led global research initiative developed to examine how young people perceive, experience, and seek to shape the ongoing Humanitarian Reset. At a time when the global humanitarian system is confronting a crisis of legitimacy, shrinking resources, bureaucratic inefficiencies, and growing demands for localization, the Humanitarian Reset has emerged as a reform agenda intended to make humanitarian action more effective, accountable, and community-centered. However, despite repeated global commitments to youth participation and inclusion, young people remain largely absent from the spaces where humanitarian reforms are designed, funded, and implemented. This report responds to that gap by centering youth voices as essential actors in humanitarian transformation rather than passive recipients of aid.

The study adopted a mixed-methods, participatory research design led entirely by young humanitarians from diverse global regions. Data was collected through an online global survey involving 107 youth leaders, activists, and representatives of youth-led organizations, alongside regional consultations that engaged 360 young people across Africa, the Americas and Caribbean, Asia-Pacific, Europe and Central Asia, and the Middle East and North Africa. Participants represented a wide range of lived realities, including refugees, internally displaced persons, young women, LGBTQI+ youth, persons with disabilities, ethnic and religious minorities, community organizers, and frontline responders. This broad and intersectional representation ensured that the findings reflect the diverse experiences of young people across crisis and non-crisis contexts.

The findings reveal a clear contradiction within the humanitarian reform landscape: while young people demonstrate strong willingness, leadership capacity, and frontline experience, they continue to face significant structural barriers to meaningful participation. Awareness of the Humanitarian Reset was uneven, with some respondents expressing familiarity with the concept while many others reported limited understanding or no awareness at all. Even among informed participants, there was widespread concern that the Reset lacks clear mechanisms for youth representation, decision-making power, and direct investment in youth-led initiatives. Youth influence was found to be strongest at the community level, where they are already actively delivering services, mobilizing communities, and responding to emergencies, yet weakest at national and global policy levels where critical decisions are made.

In response, the report outlines a set of practical recommendations for humanitarian agencies, governments, donors, and youth organizations. These include institutionalizing youth leadership in governance systems, creating direct and flexible funding pathways for youth-led organizations, strengthening capacity-sharing and information access, investing in inclusive participation mechanisms, and embedding accountability measures that ensure reforms are shaped with youth rather than merely for youth. Ultimately, the report argues that a genuine Humanitarian Reset cannot succeed without redistributing power, resources, and decision-making authority to the young people who are already driving change on the frontlines of crises worldwide.