How can an initial investment in youth-led action create opportunities for greater impact? In Ecuador, Michelle Gaibor and Fundación MOVIDANA are showing how local experience can open doors to new funding and take young people’s solutions further.
In 2025, Michelle Gaibor and Fundación MOVIDANA were selected through YOURS’ Local Actions programme to implement Zonas J, a youth-led initiative working with adolescents to identify road safety and citizen security risks in and around their schools in Ecuador.
The approach was simple but meaningful: rather than assuming what young people needed, Zonas J created opportunities for adolescents to assess their own environments, identify the challenges affecting their daily lives and contribute to solutions.
Led locally by young members of Fundación MOVIDANA’s National Network of Youth Road Safety Champions, the initiative built on an earlier connection with YOURS. The network itself had been selected through the Local Actions 2024 call, creating a pathway for young leaders to continue developing their ideas.
Building the foundations for something bigger
Through Zonas J, Michelle and her team gained practical experience testing a participatory approach to improving safety around schools. The pilot generated learning that helped lay the groundwork for an expanded proposal.
Building on that experience, Fundación MOVIDANA developed Zonas J Impacto 3S, a model that brings together three interconnected dimensions:
- Seguridad Vial: Road safety
- Seguridad Ciudadana: Citizen security
- Salud Mental: Mental health and emotional wellbeing
The expanded approach recognises that young people’s safety and wellbeing are shaped by more than one factor. The streets surrounding schools, the security of public spaces and the environments adolescents experience every day all contribute to their quality of life.
Through participatory assessments, adolescents and school communities will identify risks and needs in their environments. These findings will inform urban interventions designed to create safer, more welcoming and more vibrant spaces.
What began as a locally tested idea now has the potential to reach many more young people.
Mobilising new investment for youth-led solutions
Fundación MOVIDANA secured CAD 250,000 in new funding through Being, an international mental health initiative hosted by Grand Challenges Canada, to implement Zonas J Impacto 3S across six Ecuadorian cities: Machala, Salinas, Daule, Esmeraldas, Cuenca and Quito.
Running from June 2026 to November 2027, the expanded project will generate evidence on how improvements to school environments can contribute to road safety, citizen security and adolescent wellbeing, while exploring opportunities for replication and scale.
For Michelle and her team, this investment creates an opportunity to take their work beyond the initial pilot and strengthen a model rooted in young people’s experiences.
For YOURS, it also demonstrates the potential multiplier effect of investing in youth-led action.
An initial investment can help young leaders test ideas, build experience, generate evidence and develop stronger proposals that attract further resources.
The CAD 250,000 secured for Zonas J Impacto 3S represents a concrete example of how early support for youth-led initiatives can contribute to mobilising additional investment towards solutions developed by young people themselves.
When one opportunity creates the next
Michelle’s journey reflects a progression built through successive opportunities. In 2024, Fundación MOVIDANA’s National Network of Youth Road Safety Champions was selected through YOURS’ Local Actions programme.
In 2025, young members of that network took their work further through Zonas J, with Michelle leading the initiative. Today, Michelle continues as project lead for Zonas J Impacto 3S, taking the model into a new phase supported by additional funding.
From strengthening youth leadership to testing local solutions, building evidence and attracting new investment, each step has helped create the foundations for the next.
This is part of the value YOURS seeks to create through its work: not only directing resources towards youth-led initiatives, but helping build the conditions for young people to access further opportunities, attract investment and expand their solutions.
As Zonas J Impacto 3S moves forward across Ecuador, Michelle’s journey offers an example of what becomes possible when young people have the resources and opportunities to turn their ideas into action.