This article takes a first step towards developing a resilience assessment scale for use by development organisations offering services to youth and young adults in different cultural contexts. The purpose of a resilience assessment scale would be to assess effectiveness of services in enhancing competencies of youth in managing and adapting to adversities they experience. An in‐depth conceptualisation of individual resilience and how this interacts with multi‐layered social resilience is explored: Organisations provide psychosocial services to help strengthen competencies of vulnerable young people, who in turn can help enhance resilience in the family, neighbourhood and community.