A young Filipina is proving that youth leadership can shape decisions on the global stage.

Czieloh Villajin has been elected to the Executive Committee of World YMCA, becoming one of the leaders who will help steer one of the world’s largest youth movements from 2026 to 2030. The committee oversees the organization’s governance, finances, and long-term direction across more than 100 countries while driving Vision 2030, World YMCA’s roadmap for community wellbeing, decent work, environmental sustainability, and social justice.

Villajin secured the position during the 21st YMCA World Council in Toronto, Canada, held from 19 to 25 July. The gathering, themed “Transform,” brought together around 1,300 delegates from YMCA organizations around the world. She was the only youth nominee representing Asia and the Pacific and was elected as one of the region’s two representatives on the global committee.

“This is not a seat for one country or one region,” Villajin said. “Every decision this committee makes eventually lands in a local YMCA somewhere, and I intend to keep asking what it will actually mean there.”

Long before her election, Villajin had already been championing youth participation and gender equality within the YMCA movement. She currently leads the Youth Leadership and Development, Gender Equity, and Public Relations Committees of the YMCA of Manila, contributes to the development of the YMCA Philippines Strategic Plan 2027–2030, and serves on the Gender Equity Committee of the Asia and Pacific Alliance of YMCAs, where she helped craft the alliance’s sexual harassment policy. She is also a graduate of Cohort 5 of the World YMCA Change Agents Programme.

Outside the organization, Villajin works as Policy and Advocacy Lead at ALPAS Group, where she oversees strategy and stakeholder engagement for multinational clients. She also serves as Programme Communications Manager for Energy Transition at Forum for the Future. Initiatives she helped develop, including ANGKLA and ALPAS Talakayan, have earned recognition at the Philippine Quill Awards.

“Governance is where good intentions either become real or quietly disappear,” she said. “I want what this movement promises young people to survive that test, in every region.”

The Philippines was represented by a six-member delegation at this year’s World Council, led by YMCA Philippines OIC National General Secretary Orlando Carreon and OIC National Program Secretary Ianne Christine Aquino. They were joined by Villajin and Hanniel Saus of YMCA of Manila, Melody Quintanilla and Magda Gana of YMCA Makati, and Ain Art Atos of YMCA Albay.

Notably, four members of the Philippine delegation graduated from the World YMCA Change Agents Programme, underscoring the country’s commitment to developing young leaders.

“Four of our six delegates came through the Change Agents Programme, and one of them is now on the Executive Committee,” Carreon said. “That is not luck. That is what happens when a national movement puts young people in real positions early and keeps them there.”