Guiding Leadership and Outreach expands impact

 Sri Lanka’s first five GLO Master Trainers

• Attracts new partners and master trainers 

The Guiding Leadership and Outreach (GLO) programme, a youth leadership initiative launched in 2024 through a collaboration between the Association of HR Professionals (AHRP) and Global Learning Labs, continues to build momentum as it works toward empowering 1,000 young leaders across Sri Lanka in 2025.

Blending knowledge-sharing, skills development, and community-based learning, the GLO has quickly emerged as a flagship platform for nurturing future-ready leaders. In less than two years, the programme has attracted strong corporate backing and expanded its national trainer network, positioning it for rapid scale and deeper community reach.

Founding corporate partners Brandix, Fortude, IFS, John Keells Holdings and Sysco Labs have remained actively engaged in programme delivery and mentorship. They were recently joined by three new strategic partners—South Asia Gateway Terminals, Sampath Bank and Aitken Spence—bringing fresh industry perspectives and broadening participants’ career exposure.

A major milestone for the initiative has been the creation of Sri Lanka’s first five GLO Master Trainers: Shehara Bandarathilake, Nelushi Perea, Afifa Zuhair, Pasan Senevirathne and Surindu Goonawardene. Following intensive workshops with Global Learning Labs, the Master Trainers have already guided a second cohort of 18 facilitators, expanding the national pool to 38 certified trainers alongside the five Master Trainers, ensuring quality, consistency and scale as the program grows islandwide.

The GLO’s four-day learning model has two days of foundational leadership training, followed by a two-day train-the-trainer module. This approach drives its distinctive ‘multiplier effect’, equipping participants to lead as well as mentor others within their communities and workplaces.

AHRP Vice President Dinusha Jayamanne noted, “The GLO is truly unique in the Sri Lankan landscape because it brings together a powerful tripartite partnership between the AHRP, Global Learning Lab and corporate sector to build leadership capability in professionals, who in turn are shaping and developing the youth of our country. This creates a beautiful chain of interdependence – where learning flows from industry to young people and where youth-led community projects create real social impact. It is collaboration in its truest sense, generating positive ripples across communities and planting the seeds for a national movement of human-centred leadership that is both high-performing and deeply purpose-driven.”

The programme’s first graduation ceremony, held at Cinnamon Lakeside, marked another symbolic moment with the signing of a memorandum of understanding between Roland Smith of Global Learning Labs and Roshan Kulasuriya, the immediate Past President of the AHRP, reaffirming a shared commitment to expanding youth leadership development nationwide.