 Hello everybody. My name is Ahmed Lindawi. I am the United Nations Secretary-General's envoy in New York, speaking today from Costa Rica. We are meeting here by 2015, Global Youth Summit. We are meeting here with a brilliant team of people coming from all over the world. More than 500 participants, they are here to debate about the role of ICT to be an enabler for achieving the world we want. We are debating post-2015 development agenda. And I would like to take this opportunity, as I asked the organizers, to organize an informal discussion with some of the people and the participants who are members of the drafting committee. It's a brilliant group. We met yesterday, and we decided today to have this informal discussion so we can talk more about what do you think are your priorities for post-2015 development agenda? How have your experience here influenced your thoughts about the role of this development agenda in shaping the world we want? And how we can contribute as individuals, as youth organizations? And also, I'll be looking forward to have your questions and to discuss with you how we can make this event a big success and make sure that we follow up with the conversation we are having here. So how about we start with a round of introductions just to introduce ourselves, and maybe a preview you can start? Sure. So I'm Trevi. I am from the US. So I'm a US youth delegate here. I'm studying at Dartmouth College, so finishing my final year. And I spent this past summer representing the United States on the advisory board for this youth summit. OK, my name is Edam Montes. I'm from Mexico. I study at Tecnológico de Monterrey. And this past year, I was in exchange at the University of Geneva, and I was also an intern at the Mexican Mission in Geneva. Well, I'm Jose Callezo. I'm actually Costa Rican. It's really great to have you all guys here. We're thrilled. I'm an entrepreneur, so I spoke at the last TEDx here in Costa Rica. And I've been involved with ICTs in them, actually. That's what I do for a living. So it's really exciting to be here. I'm Felicity. I just finished my master's at Cardiff University, and now I'm interning at the ITU in Geneva. My name is Fatim Choudhury. I'm coming from Canada. And I'm studying at the University of Waterloo in environmental studies. So I'm thinking about starting this conversation. And thank you all for being here. I was thinking about starting the conversation about the team itself, and how important for young people to come and meet and debate the role of ICT. And first, I see, I mean, at least four tablets on PC and just like a laptop's here. And I see, I mean, we can't talk about young people anymore without talking about the role of ICT. I can't mention ICT without mentioning, I mean, how important the role of young people to drive the innovation in this field. So what's your take from this conference? It's the second day I know I was still debating the outcome document. But what do you think of the conference so far? Well, I think it's the first time that we have such an event here. It's been thrilling for me, particularly to come here and just meet with people from dozens of different countries around the world or countries that you've probably never even heard of or people that you would never thought you would meet. And they're probably not going to see again for a while. But I think that having this conversion of great young minds, I think that everyone here is here for a reason. And I mean, just earned their pass into the summit for a reason. So I think the people is probably what I think is the coolest thing. I mean, just this big mix up of people. And I think that great stuff can come out of it. Excellent. What do you think? I think the summit has highlighted how important technology is to young people. And I think it shows that if we weren't connected, if we went online, we wouldn't know about it. But we don't realize all the people who aren't online who don't know about it. So we should connect all the people who aren't connected so they can have the benefits that we do. Yesterday, I called the ICT as invisible tool for those who have it. But if you don't have it, you realize, I mean, how much you're lacking behind. We are talking about two third of the world population still offline. And I think this is a shame, right? I think it's surprising as well. I think a lot of people would be surprised to know that people don't have phones with the internet or they don't have laptops. We'll take it for granted because it's easy for us to understand. What I was thinking about was that I just participated in the hackathon for the last 24 hours. And one of the mentors was talking about the fact that we should really understand the problem that we're trying to solve through technologies. And I think that the role of ICT is about how we can use technology appropriately to solve the problem and have the impact that we wanna have. So that's something I've been thinking about since being here. And it's been very insightful. Any great ideas? Oh, from the hackathon? Actually, the presentations are going on right now. So you'll hear a lot of great ideas. I've been hearing like peaks and. I look forward after 24 hours of translate, man. Continue thinking about the ideas. I look forward to see the results. So, what do you, what do you want? Oh, sure. Well, for me, the summit has been incredibly invigorating. I think just meeting so many bright, motivated people from around the world. And again, from places that, for me, personally, I haven't really interacted with before. So that's been, I think, a very inspiring experience. For me, what's most important is engaging young people in the international decision-making process. And I think we have a very sort of, we have many very unique perspectives to bring to the table. And not only that, but skill sets and knowledge bases and means of approaching the world. I think for many of us, the world is no longer sort of delineated in a very sort of, you know, a national, international. Many of us are continually crossing boundaries. And so I think it's very important that this voice is represented in the international policy-making process. I really want to give a shout out to the fact that, I mean, representing the United States on the Buying 2015 Advisory Board, it was really great to see how so much of the grunt work for this summit was carried out by young people. So this is really a summit that has been put together to a large extent by young people for young people. And that's something that, for me personally, is incredibly inspiring. I'm really looking forward to the results because having such a great variety of people, of backgrounds, I think we can expect amazing ideas coming from all over the world. And for example, I participated in the jump session, which was like an event previous to this one in Geneva. And the ideas that came out of this event were amazing, like in five hours. So I'm really interested, you know, when, like, after three days, what great ideas can come out of this whole process? No, I would like to tell you a secret. I'm meeting eight people, I mean, I've been on YouthWorks since I was 15 years old. I went to so many youth conferences and events. And there are some times, I mean, we attend youth conferences and start calling others to act. So we think the most important part of the conference, calling others to act, governments, private sector, we call up on, I mean, the United Nations to do. And that's okay, I mean, that's important for you to voice and to, I mean, say what exactly you think is important to be done. But I think what's extremely important is defining what the participant themselves are going to do. Because, I mean, we are not a passive actor in this process. It's not for you just to call others to act. I here represent the United Nations, I'm very interested in taking, I mean, these recommendations and to learn more about what we can do together. But I mean, if you give me one recommendation, that will be fine, okay. This is important, it will influence my work. But if you give me idea for us to work together, that would be, I mean, something that we can directly impact the life of so many people around the world. So I'm always, I'm trying to push this, I'm fighting this, I would say, passivity somehow in the way that we call others only to act, and sometimes we forget that we have a share in this. So do you think we can come up with some concrete ideas out of this summit? Not only for others to act, but for the participant, the 500 participants, to do something together. I think that's probably what we should take in, I mean, what everyone should take in from the conference. I mean, just realize that you're, firstly you're not alone in wanting to change the world somehow one way or the other in each's own way. But the fact that there's, I mean, just the fact that there's other 500 people that had, I mean, that came all the way to here for the conference and that you have the support of them and that you can, I mean, not only just be inspired by them, but literally just be in touch with them, have them help you, I mean, have them be at contact in that country that you never knew. I think that's amazing on the power of these 500 people here and how can they inspire others around them. So I think that it's definitely, I mean, the world is gonna be ours in a few years. I mean, we're gonna be the old ones and let's hope that we keep being young and the fact that we inspire ideas and that we came up with amazing stuff to do. I mean, being young is an attitude to life as well. So you need to keep this attitude when you accept change and you are willing to be part of transforming things as well, not to keep things as they are, right? I would like to discuss with you, if you don't mind. I mean, what about your priorities for post-2015 development agenda? An issue that is important to all of us for the UN system for member states and also for municipal society organizations. And as you said, it will be ours, I mean, our work that we need to carry and we need to protect. So what do you think we should be done? I mean, what are the priorities? And let's talk a bit about post-2015 development agenda. What do you think is important for young people in this development agenda, why it's important as well? I have my answer, but I'd like to hear from you as well. I think, as was mentioned yesterday, I think, it's really important that this time no one is left behind. Because even though many of the goals were accomplished in many countries like Brazil, China, other countries, especially Sub-Saharan ones, were a little bit left behind in many of the aspects. So I think it's important this time to not to let them behind in the whole process. Like, somehow make the accomplishment of the goals more even among the countries. What do you think? I think for me, one of the key goals should be empowering youth. And what I mean by that, I mean, more specifically, education. And education can be both more, I guess, classical sense, but also educating young people in the skill sets that will enable them to compete and engage in the modern economy. And I think especially today, we are still recovering from a recent economic crisis. And one thing that governments around the world are starting to recognize is the incredible power both of young people, but also of youth entrepreneurship. Of course, there's also a danger to this, the fact that unemployment, especially among youth, can bring great instability. But at the same time, it's incredible opportunity for us to find new ways of putting young people to work and encouraging young people to develop their own businesses and use their unique perspectives to pursue new avenues that might previously have not been considered. I fully agree. I think it's important. You know, I think one of the issues we have with the many education systems we have around the world that they are so good in graduating job seekers, not job inventors and job creators. And if you're looking out to the projection, we're talking about more than 500 million jobs need to be created in 15 years. And for me, nobody can create alone, I would say, this number of jobs. So we need to change the discourse. We need to move from job seekers to a generation of job innovators and to make sure that there are entrepreneurs and they are supported, but they need to be supported as well to be an entrepreneur, to realize that you have so many challenges around you, but you are not a mean giving up. You continue to fight and to find a way to make it work. That's what makes an entrepreneur. I mean, there's no entrepreneur without being challenged. If everything is available, you can't be an entrepreneur because it's an easy job for you to get it. And you yourself as an entrepreneur, so tell us. Being an entrepreneur is hard. I mean, it's the greatest thing I've ever done. It's been such a learning experience since I moved from an office desk job to sort of entrepreneurship. I think that entrepreneurship is definitely not for everyone. And this is one curious thing, like we as entrepreneurs, we still need people to, I mean, to do the job that we create, right? So not everyone can be an entrepreneur. Here in Costa Rica in particular, I mean, I think Costa Rica is leading Latin America and innovation and we're very proud of that, but still our educational system is very, very much focused on creating job seekers. That is, it amazes me. I think that there should be a shift to that. I had the chance to meet, one other thing that's on the subject of education, had the chance to meet Osman Ríez, which is a Pakistani, literally like a prodigy musician. He's spoken on a TEDx here. He's a Ted Fellow. And his story, his amazing story was the fact that he learned, I mean, he became this prodigy through YouTube. Like he'd never had any formal education because he didn't have access to that in Pakistan. And now he's like he literally travels the world playing his music, because he's literally like a music genius. And this is one thing that I think is gonna shift soon. I'm really not sure how it's gonna happen, but like traditional education is gonna change. We have the internet now. And even though right now, like sort of graduating from the internet is not credited as a job or as a title, I think it's gonna be very, very soon. And we're sort of traveling to that. Right now we're, there's people doing jobs that didn't exist 10 years ago or five years ago, you know, the whole social media movement and so on. So these kind of jobs, I mean, the only school you have is the internet. You know, I was reading an article about jobs that would be needed in 10 years. And some of them, they sound very crazy to me, but I think they will be very much needed. So, and some jobs that we think are prestigious now, they will be irrelevant in a few years, maybe a publicity, what do you think? I mean, we have education and also nobody left behind. I think it's also including fighting poverty. But what do you think also is important? I agree with the not leaving people behind. I think it's important to try and connect as many people as we can. But I also think it'll be useful to establish when the post-2015 agenda, how we're going to look at MDGs, are we going to look at them on a global scale, a national level or like local, is everyone going to be working together? You know, so people don't get left behind or are people going to be ahead of others because they're concentrating on different areas? Because not every country is affected by the same MDGs. So how do you work together to solve them? Here was the challenge, but there are so many issues that are global now, including going with climate change, for example. And I think it would be interesting to see, I mean, the universality aspect of post-2015 development agenda, how it would be articulated as well. Yeah, so what do you think? So I'm glad you brought up climate change because that's kind of what really is my interest. And I'm glad that this conference is putting so much emphasis on environmental sustainability, which is one of the MDG goals. And extending from Rio Plus 20 last year, where I was able to kind of see how the policy decisions were being made and how sustainable development and the green economy kind of these terms kind of are now driving the conversations at the high level panel. And so for me, I think that's really a key priority is like for long-term sustainable growth that we ensure that we make sure that there are concrete solutions for climate change and environment because these are systemic problems that's gonna affect people, local farmers, in impoverished countries. And so for me, I think that's something that I'm really interested in seeing how the conversations move forward. Well, the climate change is something very important to be mentioned here. You know, the Secretary of the United Nations made one of his priorities is achieving a globally binding agreement, legally binding agreement by 2015. And he invited world leaders next year to meet in New York at the time of the General Assembly to join forces and make sure we achieve this and our efforts to achieve this legal binding agreement and the climate change. And I like how he defined world leaders. He said, I mean, world leaders included young leaders, you know, private sector leaders. So everybody's invited to be part of that conversation. I think it's very important to use again ICT and making sure that we need to negotiate with each other to find agreement because at the end of the day, we can negotiate with the planets, right? We need to find a way that we make the planet more sustainable. Maybe before we close, I would like to ask you to challenge me and to ask me as well if there is a way as your envoy to the United Nations, I can be helpful as well. And if there are any idea that I can do it and I can implement to make sure that your voices are brought to the United Nations to the all, I mean, avenues where we are debating some global issues and the government's issues. So the floor is yours. Tell me, I mean, how it can be more helpful to you as well. I have a question for you. Yeah. So how would you say that the concept of development has changed since 2000, since, like, verse MVGs? How is the post-2015 agenda be going to be, is going to be different from the original MVGs? How has it changed? I think I can't speak about the process. But I mean, the end result is not clear yet because they're still debating the end result. So this question can be answered in one year time, maybe over two years, when we have the post-2015 development agenda clear. So we can see what's the difference in trends and issues. But I can speak about the process. The process is different in the sense that we have now a very inclusive process. I'm fully part of the spectrum at all levels. I mean, everybody participated online, offline, region. That was not the case in the MVGs itself. And I think it's very important. If you want people to commit themselves to the implementation, they better own the thing. So I think there is a great sense of ownership now of the post-2015 development agenda. So this is major shift. And I think this, I mean, having the end people and all global cities are influencing, I mean, the debate is very important. And this reinforced the notion of a global citizenship, that you are not only a citizen of your country, but you are a global citizen. And you have the right, as well, to contribute with your thoughts about what should be done at the global level. Before we finish, just a few words about what they think should be done. Sure, I think, just going back to your original question just now, I think it'd be for us, it'd be fantastic to have you help us advocate for some kind of sustained structural mechanism by which young people can have their voice heard. I mean, this summit has been incredible in that regard. And it's generated an incredible amount of energy and ideas, many, many ideas over the past two months, leading up to this event, end up here at the event itself. And I'd really love to see this kind of energy and this kind of input from youth sustained, exactly. Structural, structural mechanisms. I'm a big promoter for structural mechanism. And if you follow some of the news we have, I think we have some exciting announcements for more structural mechanism to work with the United Nations. One sentence, Eugen. So how it can be helpful? So I think going off what Trevi is mentioning, I think like positive feedback loops where it's a reiterative process where the conversation doesn't end after, like you ask for the voice of youth and you get it and then there's a document that comes out. I think like making it a more reiterative process will allow us to, will allow youth to feel that their voice are being heard and implemented. And so to help the United Nations and governments accountable to their commitments. So not only I mean sharing what you think, but you are mean helping them accountable to the implementation of their commitments as well. Absolutely. I wonder if you will make this Global Youth Summit an annual event so you continue to collect ideas. I promise to take this and discuss it with ITU. This is a promise. I don't know if ITU will thank me for that. No, I promise. Actually, we'll discuss it definitely. I hope by the end of this summit we'll be able to find a way to sustain it as well. I think the internet has given us like great examples on how people have collaborated. You see for example crowdfunding, crowd sourcing. I think that we, I mean we people here and I mean we youth can use this as a tool to communicate. I mean to get messages ahead. I mean it's been done before in the internet but I think through ITU I think it could be like a bigger close up. I mean if you're working directly with the UN on a crowdfunding campaign or a crowd sourced campaign which a million people want this or that, I think that is one particular way in which youth can not only like move their peers to act on something but to I mean to get the message out to you guys. I absolutely agree and I think it's just time to move our momentum from being just a virtual momentum to link it with real action. This is exactly what I like about this conference. I think I mean it's linked between a great momentum here in Costa Rica happening with all the participants but there are great momentum happening online as well with the crowd sourcing and with all the contribution we received in social media. So I think this is very important to continue after this event. Make sure that the outcome document is a roadmap for action, not only calling others but also committing ourselves for actions. I look forward to continue working very closely with you and thank you very much. It's a great pleasure to be here in Costa Rica and to have this refreshing dialogue for this creative concept of having youth engagement with ITU and with the government of Costa Rica and also with so many other partners who are sponsoring this event. I'm the youth envoy of the United Nations, Ahmed Lindawi. It's a great pleasure to be with you. Thank you very much and I look forward to work with you. Thank you. Thank you very much.