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Youth, Belonging, and the Price of Peace at the United Nations.



We are incredibly proud of our founders, Maya and Lara Hammoud, for their address earlier this week at the United Nations during a High-Level Stocktaking Meeting as the UN plans its future direction for youth, peace, and security.


Invited to share their perspectives alongside global leaders, Maya and Lara spoke about youth involvement in mental health and disability support and why inclusion must be treated as a core pillar of peacebuilding rather than an afterthought. Their message was clear. Sustainable peace cannot exist without systems that actively support young people with disabilities and mental health needs.

Standing on a global stage, they represented millions of young people whose safety, dignity, and belonging are too often negotiated or priced out of policy decisions. Their remarks challenged the assumption that peace is simply the absence of conflict and reframed it as something far more human.

Peace, they shared, is the presence of belonging.


It is the moment a young person realizes their nervous system is not a liability, their mind is not a threat, and their life is not too expensive to protect.


This understanding was born from lived experience. Maya recounted sitting beside her autistic friend when an adult told them, “Your safety costs thirty-five thousand dollars.” In that moment, peace was given a price tag, and youth like them were never meant to afford it.


At just seven years old, Maya and Lara began their journey in neurodevelopmental disability advocacy and would eventually co-found the Perception Foundation, not to ask permission, but to prove that access should never depend on wealth, age, or diagnosis.


What began as a childhood promise has grown into the largest youth-led nonprofit in the world focused on neurodiversity and mental health support. Today, the Perception Foundation spans 28 countries with over 100 branches, reaching more than half a million people globally. The organization has created 290 cost-effective sensory resources in schools, clinics, and refugee centers, many of them the first of their kind.


Through this work, they have seen anxious children breathe again. Depressed adults feel safe enough to rest. Suicidal teenagers rediscover joy in spaces where the world once felt unbearable.

These spaces are not luxuries. They are infrastructure for peace.


In her closing remarks, Lara reminded the room of a truth often overlooked in international policymaking. Youth are not beneficiaries of UN Security Council Resolution 2250. They are its architects.


Every room built, every system redesigned, and every barrier removed proves that young people are already creating a world where belonging is not conditional and peace does not come with a price tag.


We are deeply proud of Maya and Lara for their leadership, their courage, and their unwavering commitment to building a more inclusive and equitable world for everyone.



 
 
 
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