United Nations Headquarters, New York - September 2025

As the United Nations convened its 80th Session of the General Assembly under the theme “Better Together: 80 Years and More for Peace, Development, and Human Rights,” the world paused to take stock of a turbulent yet transformative moment in global history. UN Secretary-General António Guterres captured the mood with characteristic urgency: “Our world is at a crossroads. We must get serious now and deliver.”

Against this backdrop of reckoning and renewal, Faces of Impact (FOI) joined heads of state, ministers, scholars, and civil-society leaders in New York to reimagine what global cooperation can mean in practice.

Led by Founder and Chairman Artem Shestakov and President Dr. Priyanka Chahal (Harvard University), the FOI executive team participated in a constellation of high-level sessions, bilateral meetings, and youth dialogues that together shaped the moral and political pulse of UNGA 80.

A Turning Point for Global Cooperation

UNGA 80 emerged as a moment of introspection for the international community, an acknowledgment that the promises of 1945 must be re-engineered for a century defined by climate volatility, technological disruption, and widening inequality. It tested the collective resolve of nations to adapt old institutions to new imperatives , and to transform rhetoric into reform.

Three overarching priorities framed the week’s deliberations:

1. Restoring trust in global governance through transparency, inclusion, and renewed diplomatic cooperation;
   
   

2. Accelerating progress on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as the 2030 horizon approaches with uneven momentum; and
   
   

3. Designing resilient governance frameworks for technology, health, and youth participation that can endure complexity and crisis.
   
   

The Assembly’s outcomes will resonate far beyond New York:

• The Global Dialogue on AI Governance and its Independent Scientific Panel, established under Resolution A/RES/79/325, marked a turning point in inclusive and ethical technology oversight;
  
  

• The Political Declaration on Noncommunicable Diseases and Mental Health reaffirmed equity and prevention as pillars of global health; and
  
  

• The High-Level Meeting commemorating 30 years of the World Programme of Action for Youth (WPAY+30) advanced a vision of young people as co-architects of policy, not passive beneficiaries.
  
  

As the President of the General Assembly reminded delegates, “The credibility of multilateralism now depends on its capacity to listen, not only to governments, but to the people whose lives it seeks to transform.”

Faces of Impact: From Observation to Influence

For Faces of Impact, UNGA 80 was not an occasion for symbolic attendance but for active bridge-building. Across plenary halls and informal dialogues, the FOI delegation worked to connect the macro-scale of diplomacy with the micro-realities of social transformation.

At the Global Dialogue on Governance, Dr. Chahal and Mr. Shestakov contributed to discussions on inclusive participation in technology oversight. Their interventions underscored that governance cannot be separated from cultural and structural context.

At the WPAY+30 commemoration, FOI delegates collaborated with youth leaders from over forty countries to design frameworks for embedding youth representation into decision-making at institutional levels. The conversations moved beyond participation toward shared power, how consultation evolves into co-creation, and how accountability sustains inclusion.

“Meaningful participation must evolve from consultation to co-governance,” noted Dr. Priyanka Chahal. “UNGA 80 was a call to embed youth not as observers but as architects of policy, because sustainable governance is impossible without shared ownership of its design.”

FOI also participated in the High-Level Meeting on Health Systems, NCDs, and Mental Health, emphasizing the biosocial intersections of climate change, chronic disease, and psychological well-being. The delegation’s remarks echoed a central FOI principle: that health equity, environmental justice, and social stability are inseparable dimensions of the same human security agenda.

Meeting the World’s Emerging Changemakers

Beyond the marble halls of the UN, New York’s High-Level Week pulsed with parallel convenings, the SDG Action Zone, Youth Town Halls, and Climate Ambition Summits, which served as laboratories for cross-sector dialogue and creative diplomacy.

FOI’s leadership moved fluidly between these arenas,  conducting interviews with youth journalists, facilitating small-group discussions on civic technology and storytelling, and cultivating partnerships with student networks, NGOs, and philanthropic institutions.

“The UN’s real power lies not in its resolutions, but in the relationships it enables,” reflected Artem Shestakov. “Faces of Impact exists to make those relationships equitable, so every young innovator, wherever they are, can see a path from the grassroots to global governance.”

These encounters crystallized FOI’s role as both participant and translator, an organization adept at moving ideas across scales, ensuring that what begins in conference language translates into community action.

Engagement with UN India: Dialogue with Shombi Sharp

During High-Level Week, the FOI delegation also met with Shombi Sharp, the United Nations Resident Coordinator in India, to explore avenues for collaboration that connect youth-led innovation with India’s ongoing progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals. Mr. Sharp, who leads the UN Country Team in India and serves as the Secretary-General’s senior representative, has consistently underscored the country’s pivotal role in the global sustainable development agenda and its demographic potential as a driver of transformation.

“India’s development story is inseparable from its young people,” said Shombi Sharp. “When youth are empowered to innovate, partner, and lead, they become the strongest accelerators of the Sustainable Development Goals.”

The conversation focused on key areas of shared commitment, including youth participation in governance, SDG localization, climate-health integration, and urban resilience. These align closely with ongoing UN efforts to support inclusive growth, strengthen data systems, and scale innovation ecosystems across Indian states and cities.

In that spirit, both parties discussed exploratory pathways for collaboration, from youth-led forums connecting researchers and community innovators, to localized SDG storytelling platforms that translate complex policy into civic action. The dialogue reaffirmed a shared vision: that sustainable development succeeds when young people are not only the beneficiaries of progress but its architects.

The Indispensable Role of Faces of Impact

In an era when international dialogue often drifts between ambition and abstraction, Faces of Impact stands grounded in the space where principle becomes practice.

Its work affirms a simple but urgent truth: genuine multilateralism is not sustained by declarations but by relationships, the daily architecture of collaboration through which young leaders, researchers, and community innovators transform policy into lived progress.

FOI’s distinct contribution lies in its ability to translate vision into continuity, shaped by three interdependent strengths:

• Bridging scales of influence - linking grassroots leadership with institutional decision-making so that global policies reflect lived realities;
  
  

• Humanizing diplomacy - transforming the language of resolutions into narratives of relevance that communities can understand and act upon; and
  
  

• Sustaining momentum - converting the intensity of high-level weeks into durable, measurable impact long after the spotlight fades.

By embodying this ethos, Faces of Impact redefines what it means to be a global institution in the twenty-first century. It is not a hierarchy of voices, but a constellation of listening, a living network in which every story, every youth initiative, and every act of shared responsibility reinforces the moral architecture of collective progress.

Looking Ahead

As Faces of Impact reflects on its participation in UNGA 80, one message endures: multilateralism cannot survive without generational renewal. The organization remains committed to cultivating spaces where young leaders, researchers, and community innovators engage not as guests but as partners in shaping the global future.

“We often think of governance as a summit,” reflected Dr. Priyanka Chahal, “but it begins wherever conscience meets courage. Faces of Impact will continue that conversation, quietly, persistently, and wherever voices strive to build something better.”

Echoing this sentiment, Founder Artem Shestakov added:

“Global challenges demand collective intelligence,” said Artem Shestakov. “Faces of Impact stands where dialogue becomes design, where the optimism of youth meets the responsibility of leadership to build the institutions the future deserves.”

Together, their reflections capture the enduring spirit of Faces of Impact: a movement grounded in empathy, guided by purpose, and devoted to transforming dialogue into enduring, collective action.

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