Hellen Irungu (Next Generation Leader)
Climate discourse is often disarticulated from realities and instead reduced to abstract theories and detached policy debates. Hellen Irungu believes her personal journey has been written in the warmth of a community that first saw her beyond intellectual output and embraced her lived experiences as admissible expertise to shape climate dialogue. She joined paNhari as part of the Next Generation Leaders program, implemented in partnership with Talloires Network of Engaged Universities at the height of COVID 19 in 2021, a period marked by isolation, loss, and uncertainty. Struggling with the loneliness of lockdown and the weight of a raging pandemic, she longed for connection and belonging. She describes paNhari as having been the safest and most validating space she has been part of, having previously struggled with sharing her ideas out of fear of irrelevance. The program, designed to connect students across the world during quarantine, became her bridge to a global network of young changemakers driving impact for sustainable futures.
Armed with a little more than a deep desire to learn and a volunteering background, Hellen stepped into a youth-driven space designed by and for young people. At paNhari, she met her own lived realities reflected in the stories of others, a recognition that affirmed her belonging and nurtured her agency to speak openly about her experiences.
Through paNhari’s interdisciplinary collaborations, she has co-led and facilitated conversations seeking to redesign climate justice, advocacy and community resilience frameworks. This is part of the ongoing ecosystem seeking to equip young people with the necessary tools to create an enabling community for young people to redesign the future of climate justice and ultimately, Africa’s sustainability. These collaborations have in turn enriched her capacity to coordinate advocacy programs and boosted her understanding of relative policy frameworks, bridging the disconnect with grassroots realities. She learned how to co-design and facilitate programs, build inclusive coalitions that amplify youth-led climate solutions and the critical diversity of experience and culture as a critical backdrop for resilience conversations. These skills formed the foundational setting for her first ever research on climate change by allowing her access to a rich and befitting resource hub.
Hellen recently co-designed the forthcoming Climate Impact Fellowship alongside youth climate leaders who made the core structure of the planning phase. Learning systems thinking as a framework for approaching complexities has challenged her to stay curious and critically interrogate root causes of problems Africa is faced with. These foundational skills were implemented through youth-led co-creation workshops that allowed the young leaders to own the solutions design for climate impact. By connecting her with peers from across Africa, the experience has taught Hellen to see climate solutions as part of a global tapestry of collective action rather than isolated interventions. Some of her biggest highlights working with a collaborative team have been brainstorming bold ideas for ideal engagements pathways, coming up with the most ambitious dreams for African youth in sustainable development.
The network she has developed over the years through paNhari’s guidance, mentorship, and coaching has massively elevated her professional and personal development. The check-ins she once looked forward to during quarantine days as part of solutions design have morphed into life-long friendships she occasionally leans on for support and guidance.
“The more I met and interacted with people, the more my worldview changed for the better. paNhari made that possible by reminding me that I do not only belong but also matter. I have gotten to really believe in my ideas, in myself and ultimately show up better for my community.”
Hellen’s journey is part of a broader movement of young leaders taking center stage in the reclamation of Africa’s foothold in climate-positive growth through meaningful youth engagement, which cannot be achieved without collective belonging. It requires dismantling hierarchies that silence certain voices and replacing them with ecosystems where everyone can contribute to the vision. Hellen strongly holds that for systems and societal structures to drive impact, they must be designed with the most vulnerable as the backbone, a principle paNhari exemplifies in its commitment to solidarity and inclusion.
Perhaps that is where transformation truly begins, when young leaders like Hellen are given spaces to belong, tools to invoke systems change, and communities to dream alongside. That desire fuels her vision today. Currently pursuing law at Strathmore University, Hellen has dreams of rewriting Kenya’s leadership dynamics to solidarity-based models of governance through people-centered approaches grounded in sustainability and justice. She imagines a leadership model where policies reflect lived realities, where climate adaptation strategies are designed with the voices of those most affected, and where decision-making begins with the most challenged.
Through paNhari, she found not only an aligning community but also a platform to amplify her voice. In doing so, she carries forward the work of reshaping what leadership means in the fight for climate resilience and sustainability, moving from the margins to the center.