BUILT BY WOMEN
FOR WOMEN
DISCOVER OUR STORY.
Young Champions for Change (YCC) was born from a simple belief: young women aren't just the leaders of tomorrow, they're leading today.
We're Katya Deckelbaum and Asuka Arai, and in September 2025, we met at the Women Champions for Change Summit, surrounded by leaders driving cross-cultural collaboration and sustainable development across the region. Listening to story after story, we discovered something we hadn't expected: meaningful change isn't a faraway dream. It's happening every day, in communities across MENA, often led by people whose work rarely makes headlines.
That's the problem. When these stories go untold, despair fills the silence, and shapes what an entire generation believes is possible for their region, and for themselves.
We didn't want to just witness this anymore. We wanted more people to hear it, and we wanted MENA girls, especially, to see it, learn from it, and lead it themselves. That's why we've launched YCC: to equip young women across the region with the training, resources, and networks to design and lead their own cross-border collaboration projects.
Today, YCC connects girls and young women across borders, giving them direct access to the leaders and stories that inspired our founders so that they too can make an impact.
We believe that girls aren't just the future. They're already shaping it, and they deserve the opportunity, tools, and networks to lead that change today.
OUR TEAM.
United by a passion for girl's empowerment, we're committed to using cross-border collaboration as a tool to expand our perspectives, widen our reach, and enhance our impact across the Middle East and North Africa.
KATYA DECKELBAUM
Co-Founder
Katya is a recent graduate from the University of Michigan, where she received a Bachelors of Arts in Environmental Science and International Studies. At university, Katya has spearheaded numerous cross-cultural initiatives on campus including an Interfaith Panel on Sustainability in 2023, a month after October 7th and a multi-day speaker event featuring Israeli and Palestinian activists and entrepreneurs Rina Naor and David Hasan in February, 2026. Katya was also a member of the Arab-Jewish Alliance and participated in the Entrepreneurship Exchange Program, in which she developed a proposal for a women empowerment start-up in partnership with students in MENA and Michigan. Through these experiences she has built the organizational, networking, and interpersonal skills necessary to develop and launch a leadership workshop and young girls network.
Hometown: New York City, USA
Heritage: Jewish – Israel, Spain, Bulgaria, Morocco
Languages: English, Spanish, French, Hebrew
Asuka is a high school student living in Cambridge, UK. She has lived in Japan, South Korea, Israel, and Singapore, gaining exposure to a wide range of cultures and perspectives across East Asia, the Middle East, and Europe.
Moving to the UK in high school with limited English, Asuka became her school's first Japanese student, ultimately becoming the first Japanese Head of Boarding. In recognition of her academic achievement, she was awarded an honorary scholarship following her GCSE results. In August 2024, she took part in OneTeamCamp, a programme that brought together Jewish and Bedouin girls in Israel through sports. The experience, together with the friendship she formed there, strengthened her interest in cross-cultural understanding and collaboration.
Hometown: Tokyo, Japan
Heritage: Japanese
Languages: Japanese, English
ASUKA ARAI
Co-Founder
