 Great, like a good teacher, you just start talking and everyone will hopefully follow in suit and settle down. So thanks again to all of our important morning speakers. We're so glad that Kristen Seta is still here with us. I know Bill is still here as well. And again, we've just been delighted that you're all to join us and now that we've heard even more about what's in the index itself and we've teed up a little bit about what we hope the index can do and how different stakeholders will use it. It is my very, very distinct pleasure to turn the floor over, if you will, to my very dear friend and very dear friend and colleague, Dan Rundie. Dan is a huge supporter of the Youth Initiative. He helped get it launched here as part of the project he runs, the Project on Prosperity and Development. He's the Shrier Chair in Global Analysis here at CSIS and again I'm just thrilled that he's able to be part of this event today. Our other distinguished speakers today include, we've introduced earlier Anga Marta. He is the Youth Advocate for the United Nations Population Fund in Indonesia and was a very welcome and insightful contributor to our development process. Thrilled to have as well Ambassador Ibrahim Rasul. He's a South African Ambassador to the United States. To his right, Karla Capell. Wonderful to see Karla here as my former colleague at USAID. She is currently the Chief Strategy Officer at the USAID for International Development and again we're thrilled she's here. To her right, Manny Jimenez is the Director of Public Sector Evaluations, an independent evaluation group at the World Bank and as has been mentioned earlier he was also the lead author for the seminal 2007 World Development Report, Development in the Next Generation and as well as with Anga was an important contributor with us in our global experts review so we're very glad that he can share his thoughts with us today. And last but most certainly not least at the end of the table we have Lori Harnick. She's the General Manager for Citizenship and Public Affairs of the Microsoft Corporation and we're really thrilled that she along with everyone else can be here today. With that Dan, the floor is yours. Thank you. Thanks very much, Nicole. This is really very exciting to be here to be participating in this conversation about the Global Youth Well-Being Index. I see this as sort of the mother of all conversation starters. This is the mother of all icebreakers for policymakers, for business people, for philanthropy, for the nonprofit sector, for local governments. And I think it's very, it's going to be, I think we'll have a chance to unpack how different stakeholders see the Global Youth Well-Being Index from their perspectives in this panel that we're going to be talking about. But the one thing I want to just highlight though is something that my friend Don Terry who used to run the Multilateral Investment Fund quoting Ronald Reagan said that the best social program is a job. And so my big takeaway from the data in the index is that the best social program is a job and that if we need to be doing better on the, on economic opportunity, and I think that was highlighted in the previous panel, we need to be thinking about that of course as well as the other domains that's the technical term that we use to talk about the other sectors. But absolutely we need to make sure that people are fully employed and participating in a constructive way in the economy. I'm going to start first with my colleague Anga who's flown in all the way from Indonesia to be with us. And Anga, you represent the youth on the panel if you will. But how do you think your peers should and will use the index as one question for you? And you've also been active in the post 2015 MDG, Millennium Development Goal Conversations. How do you think this index will or should inform the debate and future of the MDG? Something we've been talking about and working on here at CSIS as well. Thank you, Dan. Indeed, I'm a youth. Hi guys, my name is Anga. I come from Indonesia. I'm a youth advocate for young people in Indonesia. It's a unique job opportunity for young people like me. I'm 23 years old anyway. It's kind of like a connector between young people with United Nations system as well as government of Indonesia. Regarding your question, I think this index gives a very good set of evidence-based for young people to continue their advocacy. Because if you're talking about the post 2015 development agenda, one thing missing that based on youth perspective is actually the idea of what are the youth problem is. And I think this index can give a very general, you know, a set of identification of a problem. And then as young people, we can say to our government or we can say to other sectors like private sector, civil society, and also other sectors saying that this is our problem. And the second thing that I would like to say is actually that based on this index, we can clearly see that this is the time when young people is no longer a subject for development. This is a time where young people is a partner for development. This is a time for young people to become a subject, to work together with other stakeholders to create a better world. So I think this is a very, you know, I forgot the other word, but this is very useful for young people to know about this index and to advocate, to continue their advocacy, to ensuring that the post 2015 development agenda includes young people inside and as well as other stakeholders also consider us as a partners. So I think that's then. Thank you. Ambassador Rasul, you're the ambassador, the South African ambassador of the United States. South Africa does extremely well in the citizen participation domain, it's ranked second, but shows room for improvement in other domains. How do you think a government can use the index to address youth well-being in their respective countries? In your experience, have you seen policy reform and reaction to other types of indices, such as the doing business indicators, for example? Thank you very much. And maybe just to latch on to where Anga lifted off, I want to say that it's very, very critical to have a dashboard that, in a sense, disaggregates what is generally seen as the youth challenge and especially on a continent like Africa, where almost 50% of the world's population under the age of 35 will soon be residing there. I think what we need is not a general description, but I think a very tactile, targeted one that says, how are we doing on this? How are we doing on that? And how are we doing on that? And that's an enormous strength, I think, of the idea of an index. I think as South Africa, of course, we'd have liked to be the index not to be a snapshot, but a movie so that you can see where it comes from, where it is now and where it's going to, as opposed to this disaggregated snapshot that describes a set of indicators and ranks you, for example, 23rd. Because if HIV is a big driver of health, the health domain, then it may show where you are in, for example, infection rates, but it won't show that you've reached the summit and that you're plateauing. If that is the only disease indicator, it won't show what you've done with malaria, what you've done with malnutrition, what you've done with Qashiyoko because it doesn't get into the conversation. And so I think if secondary enrollment, secondary school enrollment is your indicator, then we feel a bit cheated because we've just reached universal primary enrollment in South Africa. So I think that we'd have preferred a movie as opposed to a snapshot. But I think that we've got to live with it as it is and thank God that we've got a very high youth participation because the point is, again, the continuum that Anga has provided, which I will add to, are youth the subjects of development, partners in development, or recipients of development. And I think that with a high youth participation index, a faith in democracy, a faith in the rule of law, a working relationship with government, sometimes antagonistic, sometimes complementary, the situation of institutions, a policy-based to deal with youth, financial resources to tackle the youth issues, I think you have a better rate, a better possibility of making not only participants but drivers of a youth wellness or well-being set of things going forward. And that, I think, is that sometimes you can have a job without a voice. And maybe what has carried us through the dark years of apartheid in the absence of jobs, in the absence of participation, in the absence of even government assistance was a voice. And a voice, I think, carries you through some of the worst times and ensures that the rest will come. So that's something that I do want to say. I think that what the snapshot also misses is a very important distinction in a situation where we don't simply have an unemployment problem, but an unemployability problem. Where we have made our transition from apartheid to democracy over the last 20 years, the world has made a transition from an industrially-based society to a knowledge-driven society. And when generations of Black South Africans have not received any education in math and science, they are effectively disabled from participation in it. And so what we have done with a functionally-unemployable youth bulge was to complement what could be achieved through an economic wage participation in a private sector-driven economy with a social wage. Cash grants, for example, when you're under the age of 18. Free health care, free water, free electricity in order to keep the wolves away from the door. And a universal school nutrition program that I think fortifies against malnutrition. And so when the bottom has fallen out of your world, I think that there's a safety net that actually manages. And those are some of the issues that are missing. The last point that I think we need to be able to do is in our second transition, going into our next 20 years, we understand the need to be a bit more regulatory with a risk-averse banking sector. Because where there's no experience in work, where there's no collateral against which to lend, you need less risk-averse financial institutions, and that's going to become a policy area in order to get us away from number 30. I think we need to be able to understand what are on that dashboard, what are the kind of regulatory buttons that I think we need to be able to overcome youth unemployment and unemployability, what are the kind of policy buttons that we need to be able to put, what are the practical things, how do we expand, for example, our public works program to give a base for experience of which the private sector can feel more comfortable hiring. So I think using that dashboard approach, this index actually positions us to understand better how to move forward. I've taken a bit more time, but thanks very much. Thank you very much, Ambassador. Carla Koppel, you are USAID's chief strategy officer. USAID's been investing in youth development for decades, and at the end of 2012, released its first ever youth policy on youth and development. How do you think the agency and the board of USG can or will use this index to inform its strategy and elevate youth as you think about achieving your mission of ending extreme poverty? Also, in a past life, you had a role working on gender issues within USAID. The issue of gender has come up in the previous panel. Could you talk a little bit about putting that, looking at it through that lens, and then finally, you've also had a career thinking about security as well, and so if you could also just give us that as well, all in three minutes or less. No, but take a few minutes. I'm on it. In fact, thank you. Well, thank you, and thank you for including me today, and congratulations on the creation and release of the index. We, as you mentioned, released the policy in 2012 under the stewardship and with shepherding by Nicole Golden, so I always love colleagues who identify things like data gaps and then go on to fill them. So she's completing the beginning of work that I know is part of a career and a passion for her. So personal congratulations to you. I really appreciate the comments that have been made to date because I think that there really are different perspectives on why this index is useful, and I was thinking as the first two speakers were talking how different my thinking was from an AID perspective on what this index does for us. We use indices in a number of ways, and I wanted to highlight four that immediately occur to me. I mean, first of all, as I alluded to, there's an incredible gap in the data and evidence with regard to the status of youth writ large and what is working where and how to chart a path forward. And this is one critically important tool for enabling us to do a better job as we design, implement, and evaluate interventions, and I won't talk any more about evaluation because I'm sure you'll focus on that. The second thing I think it shows us is really related to the trends and where we see trends that are moving in positive or negative directions and what the implications of those are, and I think the ambassador spoke beautifully to the way that reflects within one country context and then to broaden out from that country context to others and to really enable that comparison and contrast, which is another really important way to use an index and to think where there are similarities, where there are differences, where there is progress, where there is a lack of progress, and then for us to use in looking at how we're making progress in our interventions, and this isn't USAID alone, although we certainly wanna understand where we can either attribute gains to the work we're doing or where we are contributing to positive progress or indeed negative trends and to try to address those as we move forward over time. So I see enormous applicability and utility to this as we move forward in a multiplicity of ways. It's interesting with regard to my work on gender issues, there are a number of ways this plays out. From the perspective of looking at an index, we face very similar kinds of challenges with regard to data when we're looking at gender issues as to when we're looking at issues related to youth and sex disaggregated data and how you think about filling those data gaps in ways that give you the actual answers in terms of the interventions you seek. So there's that piece related to the analytical frame that you use to move forward and you see a lot of similarities when you think about gaps in data. Then you look at the challenges that youth face and how different those challenges are if you are male or if you are female. In terms of the cultural constraints you face, whether that is as it relates to your expectations if you are male or if you're a female, what you are allowed to do within your society, the extent to which you were being educated and the ambassador was talking about gaps in education and elementary and middle school education and we see that play out very clearly with regard to the enormous gaps in the transition from primary to secondary education for girls. But we also see how male youth are falling behind in certain parts of the world with implications for security and stability. And I was just meeting yesterday with a group of Pakistani women leaders who were talking about the issues with actually males falling behind within the education system and how that has implications for countering violent extremism and stability within the Pakistani context. So the spillover from the multiple things you asked me to cover, Dan, in my three minutes. And I think that what we, ultimately, when you talk about gender issues, whether you're talking about security and conflict, it really comes down to the same question is whether you're looking at a demographic dividend and how you harvest the potential and the possibility in the youth that are in many societies around the world today or if you're looking at a youth bulge that you have to manage and deal with that brings with it instability, dysfunction and the potential for economic decline. And we can talk more as we take the conversation forward but I think there's a very rich conversation to be had in any of these areas and I think that this index provides us an incredibly strong foundation for carrying those conversations forward with a foundation of knowledge, information and data that's essential to really an informed debate. Thank you, Carla. Now I understand why you're the Chief Strategy Officer at USA. That was great. Thank you very much. Very helpful. Manny, thanks for being here. You were the lead author of the World Bank's 2007 Seminal World Development Report that focused on youth and people have cited it here and I know it's been cited ever since it was published and continues to be the gold standard on youth development and obviously we think we're helping to contribute that conversation here as well. But think about how has the conversation evolved since 2007 and can you talk a little bit about how you see the index advancing the conversation both broadly but also within the bank group? Thanks very much, Dan. I don't know if your metaphor of this being the mother of all conversations starters makes me the grandmother but I'm a very proud, very proud grandparent in that case to Nicole and her team's excellent work. But I think that one of the things I just want to reflect on is I wish we had had this index and Bill remembers the early conversations in the WDR World Development Report when we started that work because one of the things I think that this index does is to start the conversation not with the people who are already committed to youth development but to the economic policy makers who really thought this was a niche social issue as opposed to really essential to how economies develop in all countries. And that conversation we tried to inculcate in the WDR 2007 and I'm so pleased that we're able to continue that conversation and remind those people who are coming next week to the annual meetings of the IMF and the World Bank, the finance ministers, the planning ministers, the governors of the central bank that youth development is essential not just for youth but to the whole country. And I think that's going to be still a continuing conversation. The other thing is I gathered that in the earlier session you talked a lot about jobs in the economic department and then you mentioned that. And that's what I see actually in the past several years perhaps reciprocated by the Arab Spring where the conversation has gone and where this index is going to play a really key role. Because again, talking back on my other point about the need to have these intersectional linkages, I think what this index does is to say, yes, it's important to have jobs, okay? But jobs is also not a niche topic. That jobs for youth depend on the education that young people have, their health and their access to ICT and all the other dimensions that this report mentions. Not to mention the very important aspect that Angare is which is to bring the youth perspective into account. We as older people who design policy often forget to or don't do enough of the consultation with the ultimate beneficiaries which are young people. And the third thing because Carla baited me on this is about evaluation. I think one of the things that I see going forward then is a real hunger for, okay, once we're convinced, what works? What actually works to help young people and economic development in these countries? And that I see as then the boundary of where we have to go. And again, I think this index puts us a step in that direction. Thanks very much. Laurie Harnick, thanks for coming in from Seattle to be with us. You're with Microsoft. And one of the things that is that ICT is quickly becoming or already is the central nervous system for the world's youth. What are your thoughts about how ICT was included in the index and the findings in this area and its implications, but also more broadly, how should the private sector be thinking about the findings of this index? Thank you very much. And it's a real honor to be here today. I'll answer a few of those questions perhaps in different order, if you don't mind. When I look at the report and the index, there are three things that strike me as really wonderful about it. First of all, I am thrilled that we started the morning with opening comments about investment, investment in a resource. Youth is the best investment we can all make in the future. So the fact that we started the conversation by looking at it as a resource to invest in I think is absolutely critical and it's absolutely wonderful. I'm so glad we did that. The second is I'm really glad that the index looked at something called the positive youth development, looking at development from an opportunity perspective. Not just seeing the challenges, but seeing the opportunity to invest wisely in young people and in our future. So from that perspective, this is where Microsoft comes in. We, a year and a half ago, created a initiative called the Youth Spark Initiative. And we did that based on a report that we did with IYF called Opportunity for Action. It was all about looking at the challenges young people are facing around the world and seeing how we can help. And what was interesting about that report, as Bill mentioned earlier, is the root cause of the challenges facing young people are very different. Those root causes are very different depending on the country, the number of factors that are here in the index and otherwise. But unfortunately, the outcome is quite similar, meaning the challenge is great that they face. And so we created the Youth Spark Initiative at Microsoft to look at ways of creating opportunity for young people for education, employment and entrepreneurship. And clearly one of those paths, not the only but one of those paths is through access to technology. And so we made a commitment over a number of years to create opportunity for hundreds of millions of young people through our grants to nonprofits that are serving those youth around the world, through our products, our services and our solutions. And the third aspect of the report that I quite appreciate is the importance of bringing the youth voice into the conversation. In my role, I have an opportunity to meet with young people all around the world that we are working with and that we are helping. And I will tell you that despite all the challenges that we see and we discuss, the opportunity, the optimism that they see is just truly inspirational. It turns you into a believer immediately. And so this idea of how we can harness the energy and the ideas and the passion of young people today and look to them to help create the solutions with help from others I think is just a wonderful way forward. The last thing I'll just say because Dan asked me to comment on in terms of ICT in this index, I think what the index does is it shows us the tip of the iceberg. What the index does because it was looking to address what can be measured at scale, it shows us that there's a lot more to learn about ICT and what it can do to empower young people and to empower those who wanna help young people and build the future. I think what one key takeaway that I have when I look at the data and I look at the material is that yes, we are understanding somewhat access to internet, access and use of technology at a base level, but what we're not yet seeing and where we frankly are putting a lot of our effort is how do we help young people throughout their development that Bill mentioned earlier from early childhood on to young adulthood? How do we help them through technology to build the skills that they will need for the jobs of today and tomorrow? Moreover, not just the use of technology but how do we help young people access education so that they can understand how to create technology so they can become the innovators that we all need for tomorrow, creating not only jobs in the technology industry but jobs in all industries and the new businesses, the new ventures that are gonna create and drive the economic growth that we're all looking for and that we're all counting on. So those are my thoughts on the index and I just wanna congratulate Hilton and CSIS and IYF for shedding light on some really, really important information. Thank you very much. I thought that was particularly helpful in taking the data and drawing a conclusion from a private sector perspective. Carla's comment about, are we looking at this as a demographic dividend or are we looking at this as a youth bulge as a challenge? I'm wondering if some of the other panelists might just speak to, when you look at the data from your different stakeholder perspective, what's the action step or the conclusion that you draw from it to move in the direction of demographic dividend as opposed to moving towards youth bulge? And I'm wondering if, Carla, I might start with you and then I'm also hearing, I think, Ambassador, to some extent, some of your comments reflected on that a little bit earlier, but I might go back to you and Anga as well as Manny and then Lori if you had any other comments. But if you could just think about, I think that frame, I think is the critical frame which is are we looking at this as an opportunity, are we looking at this as a challenge? And it is both, but what's the action step as you look at this data, and obviously you've only seen this for the last couple of days, so we won't hold you to it. But in terms of what was your first impression about, okay, what's the, when you look at this, what does it say to you from your perspective in terms of a specific action step that's needed? Carla, I'll ask you to go first. Sure, thank you for the question. So for me, the first action step is a really obvious one because we are having our Global Mission Directors Conference coming up in May and when we actually surveyed the mission directors among the top three issues that they identified for a focus was on youth development and investment. And so that was a real indicator for us of the thirst that's there for this kind of conversation. And what's interesting is it's really from a, very much from the bottom up. So what are the heads of our field offices saying are the things around which they want to wrap their minds and really think together collectively? And so the index is a real tool, but the other is how do you think about this in a more comprehensive way? And we have a number of really stand out programs around the world that are multifaceted and work with youth, whether that's, yes, youth can in Kenya or whether that's Alerta Joven in the Dominican Republic. And what we need to think about is how do you overlay those successful multi-sectoral programs with the data and see whether those are scalable and replicable in other places? And how do you then chart a path forward on the basis of the lessons learned from that experience on the ground? Carla, thanks for drawing that. When I think about the challenges of youth, it's multi-sector approaches. And I think our friends at IYF, our friends at Hilton, AID certainly think in those terms when they're thinking about youth that this is not something one sector on its own can do. The private sector on its own can't do it. Official donor sector can't do it whether it's the World Bank or AID. Governments on their own can't do it. The UN system necessarily on its own can't do it. It's a multi-sector approach. I think that's the other thing. I certainly, as I'm listening to this conversation, I'm taking away from this. Anga, I'm wondering if you might comment on the question I had about this. From where you sit in the UN system, but also could I also just probe you just a little bit further about this issue of the MDGs because the high-level panel report that came out about nine months ago talked about youth as sort of a cross-cutting issue. There wasn't necessarily a goal and there may be difficult to actually create a goal for youth, maybe there will be a goal for youth, maybe there won't, but just the way they were showing their cards, they were sort of saying they saw this as a cross-cutting issue. How, as you're participating in these conversations about the MDGs, how is this coming up? But then come back to my question as well about this issue of how from when you look at this data, what are the steps that the UN system could be or should be taking to think about youth as a demographic dividend as opposed to a youth-bulb challenge? Thank you, Dan. In regards to the post-2015 Diploma Agenda indeed, but I think there's also a big achievement there while the high-level panel of eminent person already considered young people in the report as stakeholders. And they also saying that you have to talk to young people because this is the future that they will live on. And I also think with this report, we can, this one will be really nice, what many say is like a standing foundation for us to advocate more on the youth involvement and also youth goals in post-2015 Diploma Agenda. In UNFPA itself, we are starting to advocate the standalone goals on youth in post-2015 Diploma Agenda because we think that protecting the human rights and meeting the development requirements of all adolescent and youth is so important considering that the quarter of the world population are youth and adolescents. Also we think that the post-2015 Diploma Agenda have to got involvement from young people not only in the implementation process but also in the evaluation and monitoring process. One thing that I will, I wanna talk on this forum is actually when we saw the video at the beginning of this seminar, we saw that there are 1.8 billion young people on this planet. I just want to like to say that don't just think that as a number. I would like all people here to think 1.8 billion as 1.8 billion opportunity, 1.8 billion dreams and 1.8 billion hopes that it really depends on how all stakeholders who are working together to push these young people to invest to young people to make them realize their full potentials. Last, I think there is a very good quote from the former presidents in Indonesia, the first president, Sukarno, when he said in General Assembly, he's saying and I quote that, give me a thousand old men, old men, and I will pull the mountain from its root but give me 10 young people and I will change the world. So I think that's all. Ambassador, thinking about this issue of how do we change it from a demographic dividend to a youth bold, we're talking about the great progress that South Africa has made and that not necessarily is fully reflected in the data but talk about from a government perspective, what is, when you look at this data in addition to sort of a reaction in terms of in that it certainly reflects some progress and some gaps but when you think of the gaps, where's the opportunity for government to make change? No, thanks very much. I think that the one thing that I am able to discern from the data is really that we shouldn't treat all 30 states that have been surveyed as being equal. I think that there are some who are highly democratic, some who are highly authoritarian, some who are transitional states like South Africa moving from one to the other and they all have different ways in which governments and global agencies need to be able to respond. If I take South Africa as a transitional state then we are able to use our resources to achieve certain quantitative goals. Bold schools, get everyone into school, bold health facilities, get people close to it, et cetera and those quantitative goals can be very consuming and you could be missing the qualitative goals. What happens with the quality of education and I think that those are the real kind of important things that I think we need to overlay on the quantitative goals almost immediately and someone often has to come and assist with regard to that but I think it's also about making targeted interventions and so we, for example, have seen a cellular revolution across Africa that is laying the basis for entrepreneurship because people use the handheld device to just transact almost anything even in advance on the banking system of the United States. I think the award, for example, of the Square Kilometer Ray Telescope to South Africa and seven other African states has created about six schools of astronomy across the continent and now people's eyes have been lifted to the heavens and that's driving the educational choices and so it's being able to see this youth opportunity but to understand what do you need to do in order to give them an aspiration and not just an aspiration but the wherewithal needs to be put down for it. So I really think that it's not just a whole of government approach but it's a whole of society approach and I think that we need in transitional states a lot more from the private sector and from donor agencies to help us navigate I think these sets of transitions that we've got to make. Manny and Laurie, if you could each just briefly reflect on this question of what's your takeaway from the data and Laurie, you really did answer that I think in your previous, your statement but if you had additional comments, I'd welcome it but Manny, you first if you would. Thanks, just three reflections. I think what the report is really good at is articulating the challenges that policymakers and the private sector have to focus on and one is I think that the league table of the aggregate is interesting. I think it'll get you a lot of press but to me what's really interesting is how the difference is across the different domains. So you have Columbia for example, great in participation, very low on economic opportunity. Japan is the exact opposite and to me that is absolutely fascinating as to what should policymakers really be focusing on. The second is I think there's also a distinction that the report really helpfully makes that when you take the youth perceptions into account some of the rankings change for the countries including my knowledge from the Philippines and I'd be very concerned that we may do well on some of the indicators of education and health but when you take how young people feel about that the ranking actually lowers and again there there's a lot of room to be had to have the conversations on consultations and the last thing is integrated policy and programs that you all mentioned and I think this is an enormous challenge and that getting the youth programs not just to be owned by the minister of youth if such one exists but by the ministers of economics but also health, education, justice and everyone else is a challenge. Laura any further comments? Yeah in terms of next steps that I would see things that we're thinking about and how those dovetail with this index. First of all I think on the topic of multi sector engagement that is something that we believe very strongly in when we work in the over a hundred countries where Microsoft operates around the world and approach societal challenges like youth unemployment and overall youth development. Working with nonprofits, working with government, working with our colleagues, our customers, our business partners is absolutely critical. One of the things that we did this year is we convened a group called our youth spark advisors and this is bringing in the heads of our nonprofit partners together to talk across the world around the issues and how we as a company can invest more wisely in helping them serve the young people that they are seeking to serve. Also hearing from them what are those two challenges. The second area is measurement. We, I think it was Chris who said the importance of measurement and understanding from a business perspective what is the impact. So this index is excellent in giving us another lens into looking at impact when we look at ICT and that being an area to further understand as we talk with our nonprofits in the coming year we are gonna be looking at building into our grant process tighter and tighter measurement of outcomes. So how is the training that you have provided help somebody get a job or start an enterprise? What's been the true impact on a young person's life? We'll be looking to gather that through our nonprofit partners but also through young people themselves. And this is the third point which is about the importance of youth and their engagement in this entire process. Just this week we launched something called the Youth Spark Hub. And it is a place where young people can come to find resources, ideas, connections, programs where they can create and seize opportunities for themselves and for others. And this is something where we hope to learn directly from them. What is it that's working? What can we do better? How can we help? And so I think those are the areas of sort of metrics, engagement, multi-sector approach, engagement with youth and metrics and understanding what can really make that impact. And frankly as a company just continuously learning and evolving our approach. Thanks very much Lori. Let's go to some questions. We've got microphones. Who's got questions or comments from the audience? Yes, the woman in the back row there and a gentleman in the red shirt and a woman back there that will take those three. Yes? Yes. Elena Suarez from the Inter-American Development Bank. I manage the bank's youth program. I wanted to go back to the issue that you addressed about the need for integrated policies and programs. I think this index is extremely helpful to see where the gaps are, where the greatest challenges are. But it always seems that we end up in the same place, that we need integrated programming, integrated policies and strategies. So I just wanted your thoughts, especially my colleague and counterpart at the World Bank. Why is that such a challenge? You know, politics aside. Why can't we do, first of all, where are the best practices? Where do we go to find the best practices on integrated programming? And your thoughts on why can't we turn this around? We've been at it, many of us in the field have been at it for many years and we'll always end up in the same place. So your thoughts and reflections on that. So what we'll do is we'll gather the questions and then I'll ask the panelists to respond. Sir in the red shirt. Hi, Brian Harris with IPS News. So the index covers 30 countries. I was wondering for the other countries that have not been covered in the index, how can the index guide implementation of youth development programming in those countries that don't have specific data in the index? And then this question over here. Hello, I'm Barbara Simmons. I'm with Tubman University in Liberia and I want to congratulate CESIS on this and the others. My question would be, this seems to be a perfect way to do public-private academic kind of partnerships. How can we all work together to further build on this? Okay, I'm gonna ask Manny and Carla to respond to the woman from the IDB and then I'm actually gonna ask Nicole or if someone else wants to from the panel respond, I might ask Nicole to respond to the specific question about the countries not in the 30. And then on this issue of partnerships and how do we operationalize this? I might ask each of the other panelists to talk about how do we work across sectors from your perspective and maybe that may be a way to do this. Manny, why don't you go first and then Carla and then we'll take it from there. Yeah, thanks. Getting integrated programs and policies together is a challenge not just for countries but even for organizations like my own where we're now undergoing an organization to try to get us to work out of our regional silos and silos is maybe it's just human nature. But I think that the challenge is actually for a multi-dimensional issue like youth how to get on with that. And one thing that I know Bill and IYF and Hilton have studied as well as Nicole is to make sure that this is owned not just by the individual ministers but perhaps by the higher authority that's owned by the president's office and to really drive the all of country approach that Ambassador Rasool talked about. The other thing is when that's really hard I think that another way to do it might be to go down to the local level where the sectors it's smaller and in cities and in localities. You do get a sense that these localities can make these sectors work more closely together because it's easier to do. I think there are two things I would say with regard to how you deal with multi-sectoral programming. One is it may not be that you have a single program that works in all of these sectors but rather you have a series of programs that are focused on a single sector but better coordinated and complimentary and synergistic and that if you built that complementarity rather than stove piping different endeavors you would actually get the benefits of focus specialized programs with the added value of covering different sectors. I think the other piece fundamentally is we simply have got to start involving stakeholders as partners in the design and implementation of projects and we have failed on a number of metrics whether it's with regard to elevating the status of youth or whether it's with regard to closing gender gaps because we're not involving the people we want to serve in the design of these projects and interventions and we're not gonna succeed until we do that. We cannot design things as well as they can be designed without asking people what they need and how to deliver it most effectively. Okay, Nicole, how about this question about if you're not in the 30 countries how should you think about the index? Sure, we talked a little bit about this this morning but thanks for bringing it up again it's a really important question. One of the things I said is that a number of these data points are available in many countries not included in the index. In fact, there are probably some countries where maybe all of them were available but we did make some choices to be strategic to have good regional diversity as well as income level diversity in this first index. But to those countries that are not included we hope that this index can be seen as a framework and a tool so that governments, young people, implementing organizations, corporations, any and all stakeholders can take it and run their own well-being analysis, see how they may compare and drive their own policies and programs and investments to better serve the interests of youth. So that's the quick answer. Great, so if Anga maybe we could start with you from Anga and from Ambassador Esul and from Laurie this issue of okay how do we take this and work in partnership and think about or maybe you might just reflect a little bit how does your organization partner with others to confront the opportunity and challenge of use? Maybe that may be another way to ask the question. Thanks Dan. I think in development right now there's a very big shift between government to government and right now become society to society. And I will back to my first points actually like it's really important to work with young people and consider young people as one of the stakeholders rather than put young people as a subject of development because as Ambassador also said that young people are part of development. And I think the report, the index also shown one of the result how working together within stakeholders can result to something really effective for everyone while Hilton, IYF and CSIS also consulted with young people to develop this index and like taking into account all their voice to create this index. So yeah, that's my point Ambassador. I think I've alluded to it so very simply put I think that the challenge is too big for us to wait until people conceptually change from seeing youth as a bulge to seeing youth as an opportunity. And I think it requires some leadership. And I think that the idea that we've said that we can't have the next generation that becomes just part of the problem. We've got to make the break. And sometimes governments may have to find its inducements in order to bring everyone to the party. Sometimes it is positive incentives like investments that it puts down. Sometimes it is the regulatory framework and the budget that it has in order to make financial institutions for example, less risk averse. And so I think that we are going to have to do the ebb and flow between when we do inducements and when we do incentives in order I think to get a whole of government, whole of society. But I also think that the international institutions need to reconceptualize themselves. They were born out of the preeminent international era when nations were being established and they're holding all of those decision-making participation mechanisms and everything from an international era in an area, in an era when we are global. So we don't have global governance. We have globalization without global governance. And that is why I think we are still seeking the holy grail of integration. Glory of the last word. Gee, thanks. Actually I think when you think about how to build partnerships and for me it all begins with looking at the outcomes you're trying to achieve. I think that's the best way to move forward and think about how to bring people together to solve a problem. What is the problem we're trying to solve? What is the actual outcome we want to see? And then what does each party bring with their own sort of true value to the equation? So what can a private company, what can a public company do, I should say? What can a non-profit do? What can a youth group do? We each have value to bring and it's different. And we should bring what we do best to look at all achieving the same outcome. I think when you look at the outcome and then you work backward, I think that brings to mind clear priorities and it also brings to mind a clear path forward. So that's what I would encourage is let's decide what the outcome we want to see is let's each get out of each other's way and not be redundant but all bring our unique value to address that outcome. And we have great examples of doing that in many places around the world. I agree it's often best to start local because you can see something, test it, find out how it's working and then you can scale it. So focus on the outcome, start local and then scale. Thank you very much. Nicole, congratulations. This is a great achievement and I want to thank our partners, IYF and Hilton Worldwide. Thank you both very much. Thank you all for being here and thank you to the panel. Please join me in thanking the panel.