BEYOND GDP
At the Financing for Development Summit in Sevilla, together with UN partners we launched the Beyond GDP Youth Network. Nearly 800 young people have expressed interest in joining. In November, young people from the Network joined the UN’s Second World Summit for Social Development in Doha to advocate directly to the High Level Expert Group on the metric to move beyond GDP. In March 2026, the most recent event featuring the UN High Level Expert Group indicated that the Youth Network had significant impact on the direction of the new metrics, especially the calls to embed intergenerational justice. We await the formal publication of the High Level Group to verify this.
DESIGN OF MEMBER DEVELOPMENT OFFERINGS
We’ve created a new Member Development Framework, to help us outline the learning and training offerings for our new individual membership. We’ve created a ladder of development, starting with sceptic on one end, with mentor on the other end. We note that most of our membership is probably one step above sceptics, as advocates – with limited experience but openness to learn. In many of our offerings, we will be focusing on helping members advance from advocates to organisers – having solid foundations in different capacities gained through political and life experience. This Framework will underpin all of our individual learning and training offerings going forward.
NEW ECONOMY INFLUENCERS COLLECTIVE
The New Economy Influencers Collective was established to support young progressive influencers to communicate about the economy in more coherent, compelling, and accessible ways. Over the past year, we have clarified the project’s strategic goals (starting with research and analysis of economics influencers on social media), built the core delivery team, and designed a strategic communications and economics curriculum grounded in experiential learning. We have also successfully recruited the first cohort of influencers, who will begin the programme in May 2026. Over the coming year, we will deliver and complete this first round of training, with the inaugural cohort finishing in autumn. Following this, we will gather participant feedback and conduct a full review of the programme’s curriculum, structure, delivery team, and venue. These insights will inform a refined second iteration of the programme, which we plan to deliver to a new cohort of influencers.
CRITICAL ECONOMICS CONSULTANCY
We undertook a project together with the Comprehensive Wealth team at the International Institute for Sustainable Development, creating a template for a workshop for our groups to test called “The Shortcomings of GDP and Viable Alternatives”. We got over 60 downloads, and 11 groups trialling the workshop including our Cambodian network, leading to excellent feedback for us to improve the content. REI is now developing a follow-up project with IISD and our Zambian network.