2025 tested the resolve of everyone working in international development. The war in Gaza continued with devastating consequences. The war in Ukraine remained open ended. In Syria, a historic transition unfolded, bringing both the hope of reconstruction and the urgent challenge of rebuilding institutions, economies and lives after more than a decade of conflict.
It was also the year GlocalShift moved from an idea to a working model. We started GlocalShift because the old NGO business model was no longer working. Locally led development has been a long standing ambition of the development sector, but it needed new mechanics behind it. Our answer was to connect local leadership to global networks, in that order, and to build the funding and governance structures needed to make that connection real.
This is our account of what that looked like in practice: the programmes we ran, the people they reached, the money behind them, and what we are building towards in 2026.
The year in numbers
- 107 Palestinian medical students supported through the Return to Rebuild Scholarship, with USD 600,000 disbursed directly to Egyptian universities
- More than 7,000 young people set to benefit from the Learning to Earning programme across Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine and Syria, in strategic partnership with the Abdul Aziz Al Ghurair Refugee Education Fund
- Critical medical supplies delivered to Gaza's Ministry of Health at one of the most acute moments in its history
- Three new flagship programmes launching in 2026, across Ukraine, Palestine and Syria, each backed by a dedicated donor consortium
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Reskilling in Odesa: rebuilding livelihoods, not just skills
By April 2023, more than 146,000 internally displaced people had registered in Odesa alone, arriving from Donbas, Kherson and Mykolaiv. Women bore much of the economic toll. In 2023, women made up nearly three quarters of Ukraine's unemployed, and by 2024 fewer than half of displaced women were in work.
Through Employability for Economic Recovery in South Ukraine, a joint programme with the Cegos Group and Progressive&Strong, GlocalShift helped fund free vocational training for women in the Odesa region, including a course in baking that changed the course of one woman's life.
Hanna had spent years focused on her household and children. When a registration form for the programme appeared on social media, her daughter gave her the push she needed. "My daughter said: 'Mum, give it a try. Maybe this could become your thing.' And I thought, why not take the risk?"
After completing the course, Hanna worked twelve hour shifts at a professional bakery and a local supermarket chain, learning the trade from the inside. Today she runs her own small baking business from home. "I already know that I can do more than I thought before," she says. "If you have skills and abilities, you will always be able to support yourself and your family."
Scholarships for Gaza's future doctors
Yahya Ismail left Khan Younis at eighteen to study medicine in Egypt. He always planned to go back. When war broke out in October 2023, he was midway through his degree, more than four hundred kilometres from home, and his family had been displaced seven times. With family income cut off by the conflict, he could no longer pay his tuition fees, and hundreds of other Palestinian medical students in Egypt faced the same threat to their futures.
This is the gap the Return to Rebuild Scholarship was built to close. Funded by the Arab Fund for Economic and Social Development and delivered through GlocalShift, the programme pays unpaid tuition fees directly to Egyptian universities on behalf of Palestinian medical students in their internship years. To date, around USD 600,000 has been disbursed for 107 students.
Yahya is now 25, completing his internship and on course to graduate in early 2027. He intends to specialise in gastrointestinal surgery, a choice rooted in something personal: his father died of a disease affecting the digestive system. "I see this specialty through the eyes of a physician who understands the pain scientifically, and through the eyes of a son who lived it as a human being," he says. He does not know what he will find when he returns to Gaza. He knows he will return.
Read more about the Return to Rebuild Scholarship for Palestinian students
Emergency response: dignity alongside survival
Marwa was displaced multiple times during the war. Each time she left a little more behind, until there was almost nothing left to return to, including a small project she had been quietly building before the conflict, her first real step towards economic independence.
Working in close partnership with the Ministry of Health in Gaza, the Church and the Latin Patriarchate in Jerusalem, GlocalShift channelled emergency support through trusted local networks: food baskets, hot meals, tents, blankets, hygiene kits and critical medical supplies procured directly against priority needs identified by Gaza's health authorities.
For Marwa, that support has meant more than material relief. "I am grateful for this assistance. It reminded me that people still care. I hope it is just the beginning, and that one day soon I will be able to work again and stand on my own feet."
Learn more about our response in Gaza
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The results behind the numbers
As a young, project based organisation, GlocalShift's budget each year is built on best estimates of which grant agreements will be signed and when. In practice, several 2025 projects that were expected to start earlier needed longer donor mobilisation and contracting processes than planned, so income and project spending both came in below what we had budgeted for the year.
That is not a story of underdelivery so much as one of timing. We kept the organisational capacity needed to prepare new programmes for launch, while keeping a close rein on running costs and leaving our contingency budget untouched. The result was a modest shortfall for the year, a realistic picture for an organisation in its second full year of operation, now building towards a much larger 2026.
That larger year is already taking shape. Our 2026 budget marks a significant step up, driven by three new programmes launching across Ukraine, Palestine and Syria. Growth on this scale means more scholarships funded, more people reskilled, and more emergency support reaching families who need it, but it also means GlocalShift now carries real delivery responsibility at a different scale, and we intend to report on that honestly as the year unfolds.
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Thank you
None of this happens without trust from people who did not have to give it to a young organisation. Thank you to our donors: the Arab Fund for Economic and Social Development, the Abdullah Al Ghurair Foundation, the Cegos Group, Action for Humanity, the Moroccan Association for Reconstruction Support in Palestine, Seed Programs International, and our individual supporters. Thank you to our Advisory Board, established in December 2025, for lending their experience in EU funding, humanitarian aid and governance as we grow.
Above all, thank you to our local partners across Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon, Ukraine and beyond, who design and deliver these programmes with dedication, courage and an unshakeable commitment to the communities they serve. They are the ones who make this work real.
The students in Cairo are still waiting to return to a rebuilt Gaza. The workers in Odesa are learning new skills as the war continues nearby. The farmers in Birzeit are rebuilding from the ground up, literally. These are the people GlocalShift exists for. This report is our account of how we worked to serve them in 2025, and our commitment to do more in the years ahead.