 Welcome to the ITU studio at the World Telecommunication Development Conference in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates. Today I'm very pleased to be joined by Susan Shaw, who is the head of Special Initiatives Division for BDT at the ITU. Susan, thanks so much for being with us today. Pleasure. Now, you've just recently released a report on digital opportunities which covers innovative ICT solutions for youth employment. I thought we'd talk a little bit about that today. Perhaps you could give us a little bit of an overview of this report. Well, as we know, many countries around the world are struggling with escalating rates of youth unemployment. And what the report covers is that digital solutions can and should be incorporated into national strategies to combat youth unemployment. It talks about the need for improving digital literacy skills among youth worldwide. And it also talks about incorporating innovative ICT solutions in the promotion of entrepreneurship, for example. The reason that digital literacy skills are so important is because ICTs have transformed all market segments from traditional segments of agriculture and manufacturing to new market segments that didn't exist a couple of years that are totally generated by ICTs, such as the apps economy. According to the report, there's a bit of a skills mismatch. Is there at the moment with that? That's correct. So the report notes that the market is demanding certain skills and finding that today's youth don't have those skills. So while there are employers out there seeking to hire people, they don't have the right skills. And one of the key skills they don't have are digital literacy skills. There's also a lot of opportunities being generated by the ICT industry. That's true. So for example, the report highlights a lot of business opportunities that young people could benefit from, including micro work and crowdsourcing. So micro work is allowing employers that have a large task to break it down into mini tasks and then distribute that work globally, including in developing countries where young people could be hired to do that kind of work. And in the same way crowdsourcing is doing, following that model in some examples, or taking a bigger project and finding skilled workers to do that project. And there is a crowdsourcing company called Crowdflower that hires people in 70 countries around the world. So it demonstrates that these ICT skills, if youth have them, can lead to jobs both in developed and developing countries. Talking about skills, how can we equip young people for the skills that they need for the digital world? Well, one of the premises of the report is that it would be ideal if young people are learning these skills in school while they're in school. So it argues that digital literacy should become part of the curriculum in schools. But it also addresses out-of-school youth and saying that we have many telecenters, libraries and other community ICT centers. So if we can train the managers of those public spaces to be curators of all the free online training materials there, then they can work with young people when they come into the center and direct them to the right resources. We're talking about crowdsourcing as one method of employment and creating employment. Obviously, young people nowadays are also, apart from job seekers, they're also job creators. How can we carry on encouraging that? Sure. So one of the things, the other thing that the report highlights, is how young digital entrepreneurs have a completely new way of doing business. So one model that works very effectively is to have tech hubs or incubators or run mobile app labs, hackathons, maker fairs where young people work together. For the incubators, what's going on there is the young people are finding the resources they need. They're finding internet connectivity, shared office space, and then the shared office space has the additional benefit because the young entrepreneurs mentor each other. And then there's constantly a new wave of people coming in, some people going out, and some people coming in so that they create networks. And then there's online networking that continues after that. And finally, what about ITU's role? How can ITU inspire action? Well, ITU can inspire action by raising visibility for this issue and raising visibility for the many digital opportunities there are to combat youth unemployment. That's why we've released this report. We have also developed a database of all the online resources that we've been able to find in multiple languages across the world so that people that don't have the digital literacy skills that they want can find that, can do that online if they're motivated. We also have lots of links to things like CrowdFlower and other support services for young entrepreneurs. Susan, well thank you very much for being with us today. My pleasure. And thank you for being with us too. You can find out more details of the report at the ITU website.