Shifters are younger than you think

One of the newsletters in 2024 from our colleagues at CUBIC about Belief Perseverance struck a resonant chord with us; we have repeatedly heard that “SHIFT is mostly for youths”. While it is a simple belief, it has potentially major implications - “the tendency to cling tightly to initial conclusions” about SHIFT directly affects how one imagines future possibilities, synergies, collaboration opportunities, potential integration and even its limitations.

However, research suggests that while belief perseverance can be quite stubborn to shed, a combination of critical thinking, diversified evidence and open-mindedness can help overcome it. That’s why we are starting off 2025 by cleansing away assumptions and going back to the very beginning of SHIFT in 2020 to systematically understand who Shifters are globally. Here’s what we found:

1 IN EVERY 5 SHIFTERS IS A CHILD (<18) IN AN EXCLUSIVELY CHILDREN-ONLY GROUP

Out of 63 shifter groups in 17 countries, 8 groups are composed entirely of children¹ totalling 377 Shifters; this makes children the second-largest Shifter demographic. However, if the age cut-off is adjusted to 19, adolescents² comprise 29% of all Shifters globally - the largest demographic in the SHIFT universe.

YOUTH MAKE UP ONLY 10% OF ALL SHIFTERS GLOBALLY

Despite prevailing beliefs that SHIFT is mostly for youths, in reality, youths³ make up only 10% - that is 1 in every 10 Shifters. Even though youth shifter groups outnumber children-only groups i.e. 19 youth groups (versus 8 child groups), the number of Shifters within children-only groups generally remains larger than the youth groups. This could perhaps be one reason for the prevailing belief that SHIFT is mostly for youths. 

FEMALES MAKE UP THE MAJORITY OF SHIFTERS!

Within the SHIFT universe, females make up 54% of the Shifters followed by males at 43% and non-binary Shifters at 3%. Females make up the majority in all demographics except Young Adults4 (18-25) and Adults5 (>18) where males outnumber females. 
 

While a majority female has the advantage of numbers and therefore, the opportunity to mainstream gender into Shifters’ campaigns and activities, it needs to be balanced with not perpetuating the broader the broader gender inequalities with females taking on unpaid, voluntary work disproportionately.

SHIFTERS GROUPS THAT FALL INTO MULTIPLE DEMOGRAPHIC CATEGORIES MAKE UP 15%

17 groups out of a total of 63 have members in an age range that cannot be neatly folded into defined demographics such as children (<18), adolescents (10-19), youth (15-25), young adult (18-25) or even adult (>18). See the example below.

This mixed group make up the third-largest group in our dataset comprising a total of 249 Shifters. In our experience, this reflects the on-ground reality where young people primarily mobilise around an issue that inspires their passion and collective action - not rigidly around an age criteria. 

This diversity in their members' age also makes it more likely for movements to be genuinely led by young people, since older adolescents and youths often have the required capacity to lead independent groups. Supporting such a movement also simultaneously invests in a graduation model that younger children can step into as they become youths and young adults. 

1 A child is any person under the age of 18 (UN CRC)
2 Adolescence is the phase of life between childhood and adulthood, from ages 10 to 19 (WHO)
3 The United Nations, for statistical purposes, defines ‘youth’, as those persons between the ages of 15 and 24 years
4 Young adulthood is a unique developmental period that occurs between the ages of 18 and 25 Years (Higley, Elena, "Defining Young Adulthood" (2019))
5 WHO defines “an adult is a person older than 19 years of age unless national law delimits an earlier age”. Since most countries sets the age of majority at 18, this article also adopts this definition

BEYOND DEMOGRAPHICS

While demographics give us a broad overall picture of the Shifter groups, they tell us nothing about their cascading impact on children in their communities. For instance, in 2023, a group of 8 Shifters aged 18-25 (young adults) in the Tsagibji district of Ethiopia led a grand march in their town. Under their campaign motto “All Children to School” they united the entire community and advocated prioritising education for all children.
 

This eventually led to 600 internally displaced children returning back to school. SHIFT in Ethiopia shows us that even in cases where Shifters are not necessarily children (<18), the realisation of children’s rights, i.e. access to education, remains at the heart of SHIFT.