 Good morning, everyone. And a beautiful, beautiful fall day. Although I think it's supposed to get hot again. I'm Carla Coppell. I'm the Vice President of the Center for Applied Conflict Transformation here at the US Institute of Peace. Welcome. It's our honor to be hosting this Conflict Prevention Resolution Forum. And we're really honored to have an exceptional panel here to talk about youth working for peace and equality. I should say this panel is fortuitously time to come right in the midst of a campaign. We're engaged in with a number of partners in civil society and in government around the connections between youth empowerment and leadership, peace building, and gender equality that has spanned from International Youth Day through International Day of Peace next week and then on to International Day of the Girl in October. And we have a website. Allison, I don't know what the web address is, but do you know what it is? USIP slash we will get it for you before the end of the event so that you can visit, because it has a lot of wonderful collateral material related to work for youth empowerment, gender equality, and peace building. I'm not going to talk too much. I want to introduce our exceptional panel. And we really want this to be an engaging dialogue involving all of you. So we'll get started. Immediately to my right, and we just were discussing seat placement. So is Michael McCabe, who is USAID's youth coordinator. He started earlier this year, but brings with him 28 years of experience working on development and is in charge of implementation of the US Agency for International Development Youth Policy, driving engagement around youth development issues across the agency, and he's also the agency's senior representative on youth development. So welcome, Michael. Victoria Ebebouye is the founder of One African Child Foundation, and she's a Gen Change fellow with USIP, so has that affiliation. And at only 22 years old, she is running a foundation that's working with children in the slums of Lagos promoting their education and life skills training. Welcome, Victoria. And she also is interesting, because while she works in civil society, she's also the regional focal point for the UN major group on children and youth in Western and Central Africa. And so I think that folks who bridge that, bridge the UN system, formal organizations in civil society bring a special perspective to the conversation. Kaleb Gichui. No, that was wrong. I'm going to try again. It is Kaleb Gichui. OK, that was better? Yeah, that was good. OK. Sorry about that. You guys have a tough name. All right. So he's here with Peace Tech Lab for a while as a Yali fellow, correct? And that's why you're in the country? Or how did you arrive here? Community Solutions Program Fellow. OK, great. As a Community Solutions Program Fellow, and I need to know more about what that is, but not now. But he's working on the Sawa Shabab radio program in South Sudan and is really an expert in the use of communication technology, which I think is really an important key to success when we're talking about youth engagement and moving forward some of the solutions to engagement of broader segments of the population. So welcome, Kaleb, even though I butchered your last name. Thank you. Lena Slakmulder is the vice president of programs with Search for Common Ground, a partner to us on many endeavors, including conflict prevention and resolution forum, implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 20-250, and a range of other endeavors. Welcome back to USIP. And Lena is a specialist in Africa. She lived and worked there for 22 years, 21 years, I guess. And you've trained journalists, artists, and peace builders around the world. So we welcome you, and we look forward to your comments. So without further ado, what we wanted to dive in first is talk a little bit about Resolution 22-50 and the youth peace and security agenda. What the challenges are that we're trying to address as we address issues of youth peace and equality. And I wanted to turn first to you, Lena, to frame the challenge for us a little bit. OK, so I think that it's really interesting for us just to recognize how much where we're at in 2016 is a culmination of a number of things that were both opportunities and threats and that how we see going forward in the youth peace and security agenda. So peace building, last 35 years, there's been a lot of work to try and enable an all society approach to building peace. So beyond the diplomatic channels to civil society, to women, to media, and to young people. And search for common ground, we started a children and youth department in 2001 with one person who came and said, how is it that we can really enable young people to be much more part of building peace? And over the last 15 years, we've been able to work really closely with a number of other key partners, including the UN agencies, to build a momentum that led up to 2250. So a little bit more detail is that in 2012, search for common ground with a number of other international NGOs working on peace building with various UN agencies created the interagency working group for youth participation in peace building. And this had a really important role in trying to set an agenda around what does that really mean? How are we defining youth? And why is their contribution to peace so valuable? And the first thing that they tackled was doing the guiding principles, which was a way of getting everybody's lessons learned from what they'd been doing. And notably, a lot of people who'd been doing peace and reconciliation work throughout the 90s from the Balkans through to the Great Lakes region through to the Mano River area had really been able to see that when young people were part of conflict, they needed to be also part of the solution. Both in terms of the DDR processes and reconciliation, we began to really be able to curate some lessons learned. So those fed into the guiding principles, which were then moved around in various different platforms to try and mobilize support for how we could make this operationalized. And then between 2013 and last year, a number of different advocacy and initiatives took place, culminating in three key events last year, which I hope many of you are proud of being part of, which was in April, when the youngest ever chair of the Security Council in the Crown Prince of Jordan raised the issue of youth participation in peace building at the Security Council for the first time ever. That was in April. Following that, the Jordan government said, you know, we actually want to take this seriously. And May, within a period of four months, co-hosted with the UN agencies and search was very much part of that, the Amman Summit on Youth, Peace and Security, which led to the Amman Declaration saying, this is actually, we are young people, 500 young people from countries around the world. This is how we want to be engaged in peace building. This is what we see our role and these are the kind of partnerships we want. That was a really powerful document. And then the last day of the Amman Conference, the foreign minister gets up on stage from Jordan says, you know what, I'm going to take this to the Security Council. And we said, okay, that sounds good, probably won't happen. And indeed it did. And in December, we have resolution 2250. So really historic opening for us to be able to recognize that there's 1.8 billion people in young people in the world today. 600 million are living in conflict zones. The majority of them are not involved in violent conflict and yet the majority of armed groups and extremist movements are recruiting young people. That's both the threat and the opportunity to really take forward an agenda for young people in peace building. And I'll end by saying that right now, the questions that we'll explore here today are really about why is it that, how might it be that 2250 can be operationalized in a way that builds on the strengths of the 1325 efforts of women's engagement in peace building? And how can we learn from those lessons? What is it that we're seeing our other obstacles to youth partnerships with government's private sector and other civil society organizations and donors? And what are other things that we need to keep in mind? So let me stop there and then there'll be other things we can talk about in terms of the operational guidelines and different things that search for common ground with the interagency working group are working hard to try to make this a reality. Great, thanks. That's a perfect encapsulation and framing the issue. Michael, maybe you could build on that a little bit to sort of frame for us the challenge because what we wanna do is start with that frame and then move towards the solutions that we can define together. Great, thank you. The challenges are massive in some ways, as was mentioned. Not only do we have the largest youth population in human history, but just looking at the challenges that youth themselves have identified. So if we listen to the world we want survey from the UN or restless developments, surveys of young people, the top issues are pretty obvious that they're coming up with that youth unemployment concerns, education concerns, sexual reproductive health security concerns that they have in youth voice. But when we look at those numbers specifically, youth unemployment, we need to generate five million new jobs every month for the next 10 years just to keep youth unemployment at its current rate, which is about three times the adult unemployment rate. That's a lot of jobs when a government, whether it's in the Sahel or in Central America or in the US or anywhere, is looking at how many new jobs it needs to generate. We know that jobs are not the source necessarily of some of the violent conflict and drivers there, but it's a major contribution. The second one is, as was mentioned, in terms of the percentage or number of young people living in fragile states or conflict zones, whether it's the 1.5 billion in general fragile states and conflict areas, but more importantly of young people who are living in refugee or IDP settings where out of the 50 million plus we've got the majority of those being young people and on average 13 years in that sort of condition where education comes after food, water, and safe lodging, often we don't have enough money invested there. And so we're losing whole generations in terms of that educational opportunity and building. So, and the last part of it is around youth voice. While young people make up over 50% of the population those under 30 in most countries, we find that only 6% of parliamentarians are under the age of 35. So, I just came back from Uganda and young people are thirsty for their voice to be heard. And there was a lot of momentum around the last elections where young people were excited about it. And I think the current feeling right now was that some of their aspirations of true representation didn't play out there. And there's a growing sense of do we want to stay engaged? And if we look at the Afrobarometer Report for 2016 in Africa we see that the levels of youth civic engagement are actually going down from the past few years to this year. And in particular for young women, it's dropped even more precipitously. So issues of voice, employment, educational opportunities all contribute to how do we make sure that young people feel that they are taken seriously to take action on peace and security. That's great. And great juxtaposition of some of the challenges related to leadership with the real development challenges in the world. Victoria, you said you had a particular message related to the barriers that you wanted to raise. And I think it dovetails perfectly with what Michael was just talking about. Yes, I already covered most of what I wanted to talk about. But I would like to focus on inclusivity. And I feel that the Resolution 2250 has been able to cover the youth voice. We live in a world where we don't want young people to be left behind anymore. And the Resolution 2250 is making it possible for children and youths to be heard, for their voices to be heard, not only at the international level, but also at the national, regional, and local level. And I think that's something that's a conversation that we should really be discussing today. That's great. Thoughts from all of you on other elements of the challenge or concerns that come forward to you that have not been captured by the panel. And again, we really want this to be a conversation we'll be structuring it in different segments. So what we wanted to do was say, okay, how do we have a fulsome definition of the problem? We'll pivot in a few minutes to then say, what are the answers and solutions? So we would really welcome your thoughts if you have any. I don't know if there, yeah, there are microphones and we can bring those to you. You have no thoughts? I don't believe you. Back of the room. It's a city full of thoughts. Come on. Hi, real quick, I know that there are a lot of great programs out there. What about the interaction between youth from different cultures and different countries working together as a team to seem to build more rapport between these groups, not just one segment of youth having a voice heard but working together collaboratively? I can't say it. Thank you. That's a great point. Would you like to comment on it, Colin? Yeah, on that, just the other day, I think it was last year, I was actually with Victoria at the World Humanitarian Summit and they were talking about it was like youth voices, how can they be heard? And you had youth from the main region which is North Africa and Middle East. And what they were saying is we are in the same conflict. We are fighting the same war. But nobody is listening in the sense that they kept on saying we want our voices to be heard because we are on the ground together. We talk to each other and we are collaborating. So me being there from Middle East Africa, I was able to learn what are they doing and even be able to engage with them on that level and see their conflict might be different from what I'm doing back at home. But how can I leverage on what they're doing and how can they leverage on what we're doing? Because we're talking about how can we use technology, how can we use, how can we look at tools that are available for us that other countries are using? I think such forums have enabled people like youths from different parts of the world to come together and actually share what they're learning. And what I've learned is like youth, especially peer-to-peer learning, is very strong amongst youth. So you have youth influencing other youth negatively, but also you have the aspect of having the youth influencing other youth positively. So I think once you leverage on the peer-to-peer learning among youth, you start to find that different youth from different parts of the world actually learning the same, yeah. That's a great observation. I would add two things. One, sort of more on the positive and then the other more on the side of barriers. I always had the opportunity to participate in several of the cadres of the administration's Young African Leaders Initiative and the connections among the young leaders that came in through that program were extraordinary. And I met them first here in Washington and then met with them in Accra and in Kampala and in Nairobi. And they had retained a lot of those connections and I think you're the perfect person to speak to it because a lot of it is driven by new technology and being able to stay in touch through Twitter, through Facebook, et cetera in ways that you couldn't before but it really provides an incredible opportunity for learning and mobilization. The second I wanted to mention, we had some research recently on community resilience that came out and one of the interesting findings from that research and I think it relates to the barriers that you pointed out was that you really need to bring along the elders within communities as you empower youth because what was found was that if you didn't do that, you ended up actually creating resentment and often pushing down the activism that you were trying, the leadership that you were trying to embolden because those networks and established hierarchies were in place and were really culturally important. And so that needed to be part of the answer. So couple issues related to how you bring youth together and how you bring them together with other populations. I have a question right over there. Yeah. Thank you very much. I would like to hear the panelists, especially Victoria and Colin, talk a little bit more about how they see governments divesting themselves from the infrastructure that actually puts barriers in the way of youth because to me, I think that education is one of the biggest barriers and as governments continue to invest in the same system that has marginalized and disenfranchised youth, I don't really see how this can be a winning battle unless governments are willing to take a big leap and make some very radical changes as far as the kind of education that they provide. So I would love to hear more about that. Thanks for the question. Victoria, since you're focused on education, maybe you first then Colob. Yeah, so I was just talking to Mike earlier today about what we do at One African Child, which is to focus on global citizenship education and peace building to transfer life skills to children who come from low income communities in Nigeria. And I feel like the education system in Nigeria needs a leap and when we talk about gender equality, for example, in the school system, there's still this bias of stereotype of the identity of what a male is and the identity of what a female is. And I feel like the government should be focusing more on how we can break down this bias and how we can encourage more young people to see themselves as equals. But the education system is not really allowing for that. And one of the things that I think that the government can do is again, as in Resolution 2250, to see youth as partners and solution providers. Young people who already run initiatives and project to support what the government is doing. The government should be supporting them as well. The government should see them as partners and peace building. And the government should be investing more in youth efforts and collaborating with youth, rather than seeing them only as beneficiaries. Great, Colob. Yeah, one of the things that I'm working on right now is looking at data on social media. And the other day, we're looking at, let me take an example, Facebook, right? So we have 1.7 billion users, and then a majority of them are youth. And they're telling us something on Facebook, but we're not listening. And when we're looking at the statistics, the top 10 pages, believe it or not, four of them are basically on sports. Focus on football. Number three is Cristiano Ronaldo. Number seven, I think it's Inter Milan, Barcelona, and then Lionel Messi. And then one and two are Facebook pages. But the youth are telling us something. When the government is focusing on education, the youth are focusing on something totally different. And what you're saying is, okay, we want to educate, which is good, but however, are we listening to what they're telling us? You have this network of people that are communicating. And what she says is, if we bring them on the table, and we start saying, okay, what are you talking about? How can we invest in what you're talking about? In Kenya, we have a seed funding for youth. The government has put money aside, grants for youth to come and tap in and say, okay, you can come tap into the fund and start a business, but youth are not doing that. Why? Because they don't have the skills. They're not capacitated. But the education system will focus on something that's totally different. But the youth are saying, I want to learn how to just start a business, a small business. I want to grow tomatoes in my backyard and then be able to pay back that money. But if the focus is different, if the youth is talking but the government is focusing on something totally different, they're going to put more money, which again will still go back to the economy. I mean go back to their banks because the youth are not tapping. So I think having them at the table where they're discussing and saying, okay, you have one billion, this is what we want. It's not necessarily education. It might be something else. It might be arts. It might be dance. But it has to be like, that statement says, not for us without us. You have $1 million, they are for us, but we didn't consult us on what you want us to do with that money. You just say, come and take it. So yeah, so I think that's how we can work. Great, Michael. No, increasingly USA since our 2012 youth and development policy has been trying to change the lens we're using of looking at youth as a problem set with risks to engage them more as partners. And a great example is in Morocco where through our youth speak initiative, we took young people who had dropped out of the education system and said, we want you to be investigators with us on why young people are dropping out and how we could bring them back into either formal or non-formal education. And by engaging young people in that process of research with us, those who had dropped out, it not only built their competencies and self-efficacy, but it actually came up with better solutions and the Moroccan government then expanded that from three regions to nationwide. And so by looking at ways that we recognize young people as partners that have a lot to tell us about what might work and what won't work is really key, especially on education, where USA just put a lot of investment in early grade reading and then a focus on workforce development. Our trajectory over the past few years has been looking much more cross-sectoral programming, saying it's not just about training a kid up for a job and doing job placement because they come home to a whole array of issues of violence in the household, violence in the community, need for youth-friendly services. So through our new youth power related projects, we're really focused on a more cross-sectoral approach to education combined with workforce development, combined with youth violence prevention activities. So a much more comprehensive way of looking at it. Right. Lena, did you want to add something on the education? I think I would just build on that. I think that at search we've seen that when we develop methodologies where it's youth-led research, where it's youth councils that are trying to build relationships with local authorities in a way that recognizes that there's a trust deficit, that recognizes that young people can be seen as a threat and that they themselves want to step out of the space of please help us. We have all these needs and that sort of adversarial advocacy space. That's where the potential is. So even in the way that we with others are seeking to guide the rollout of 2250, it's about creating alliances which recognize that it's firstly about trust, it's secondly about how can we have a joint understanding of the problem at hand, and then as we build that partnership, it's less adversarial and it's more as though everyone is seeing from government, private sector, educational authorities with young people that these are the best initiatives to respond to our needs. And one last comment is that 1325 led to extraordinary progress in women's rights and resentment and alienation by some societies, by some communities, by some more patriarchal governments. And so this is an opportunity for us to recognize that there are some relationship-building initiatives to do and the way we engage young people as partners and the way young people step into that space can really make this a very different and more powerful experience. That's great. So I think on the education, so thank you for the question. I mean, there are a number of different components, right? There's how you bring youth into the decision-making and shaping the education system. There's the content of the education system and whether that's really serving the needs of societies and then there's the issue of how the education system functions and whether it's reaching everybody and whether we're also marshaling new technology to reach people in the ways that are interesting to them and motivate them. Final thoughts related to barriers? Yeah. And maybe you could just say who you're with and we're gonna give you your 10,000 steps today, walking the microphone around the room. Hi, this is actually a question from a participant that's watching through Facebook Live. Great. And she's asking Victoria and Caleb specifically, would the number of youths in Africa would a continent-wide movement of youth empowerment for education reform be possible? Kind of a power in numbers to push government change? So you disagree with that? So, would a- Would the number of youth that are in Africa, if there were some sort of continent-wide movement for youth empowerment in education to push government change, would you see that as something that is a possible step? Go ahead. And then we'll circle back. I mean, that's an interesting question. Just before I respond, I want to just note that when people talk about youth, it's not a homogeneous group. Like it's in the youth bracket, there's still subsections. It's heterogeneous depending on where you are, what you're doing, your type of environment around you. So, I mean, we've seen movements in North Africa where youth came together on social media platforms and have pushed for specific agenda. So, when you look at Africa as a whole, this is a big group. However, the priorities are different. And people are looking at different things at different places at different times. And, yeah, it would be a good idea. However, I think the challenge would be then, how then do you have them speak about the same issue when some of them are totally talking about different issues. So, I think when you realize, like in this one group, the well-told stories have a good analogy of youth. They say, there's a disenfranchised. There's disengaged. Then you have the professionals and then you have the insiders. And all of these people are talking different. Like, they have different stories. They have, like, their own ideas, ideologies. So, bring them to the table and having them talk about one issue might be a bit hard. That's my understanding. But realizing that all of them have different needs and are broken down to different segments, you can start addressing them at their own particular level. Because messaging is key when especially mobilizing a group. Because if they're not having the, if your message doesn't tap to the consumer, then the disenfranchised will basically say, that's message not for me. I cannot mobilize. I'm hungry. I cannot mobilize. But the insider will say, oh, I can have a job. I can go to the streets because my job is at risk. So I think when you realize those differences, then you can start seeing how maybe mobilization can work. Yeah, and adding to what Caleb has said, I would like to talk on approach and support. So it's also matters that we approach stakeholders like the government and international bodies. And also, it also matters the support that we are receiving from other parties around us. So I believe that if young people come together and stand with one voice, this can be realistic when youth come together. Another barrier can be youth having different groups. Young people ask, sometimes we are often doing the same thing, but we call them different names and we are split into different groups. So when we come together and see the power of, the youth power, seeing ourselves as one, then this can become realistic. Great, thanks. Hi, Sefer from Macedonia, Balkans. Europe. So I had some thoughts about the panel and what was there speaking. Is that youth, most of the time, they are not seen as the agents of the change in the society. Like, I think that we are missing the connection between the international donors and the civic society to see the youth as the agents of change for those societies. I think that the efforts, especially in crisis zones, of the international bodies and international donors and funders to work with the government, most of the times leads in not the right direction, but, and there are miss the CSOs and the organizations that deal with the youth and empower them to become the change of the society, to be the change agents. So I have a question for the panel, like, if you could identify one thing that the youth workers do wrong when they approach to the youth, what would that be? What's the wrong thing that they are doing? Yeah. The youth workers do when they approach youth? Yeah. How would we improve? And all the other stakeholders, what's one thing that you see as a wrong doing, like, they do it wrong by mistake. They do a mistake on it. So obviously the proof in the pudding is, can we move beyond rhetoric to a change in reality? And a lot of times, I think what we find is traditional civil society organizations don't create the space for young people to come in to advocate to have voice. And so what happens? We have a lot of young people who create their own social enterprises, their own organizations. The downside of that is to set up an organization. There's so many responsibilities. And at least from the donor side, there's not a lot of easy ways to channel resources to youth-led organizations. The procurement rules, the reporting rules, just make it very, very difficult to do that. So then you have a lot of youth-led initiatives that aren't resourced adequately. And so young people are stretched very thin and they're able to mobilize through their networks, but to sustain that, that's very hard, not only because the resources, but also it's a transitionary period. So one of the things that I'm thinking has great potential is across just in Africa, there's 300 innovation hubs that are existing. There's only 160 in the US. There's 300 across Africa. And the benefit of kind of creating these social hubs is you can unite the back-end responsibilities of financial management and reporting and things like that, allowing young people to really focus on where their passion is, on what they're trying to deliver related to any of the SDGs or what they're interested in. So by helping young people better coordinate the back-end responsibilities, they need to get some of the resources. That's one way we can allow young people to get the visibility and the credibility that they can increasingly build out their organizations and sustain it. There's something that particularly I myself have witnessed and I've been part of and I've done the mistake as well. And we coined the name, we called it the Todler concept, complex, where you find, you mix the formula and you give it to a baby and you tell them, this is supposed to make you grow. So you have donor agencies, civil society groups, they sit down and conceptualize an idea for the youth and they say, okay, this is going to help youth in Kenya, in Lagos. And this project is gonna help them, right? So you develop a concept, you ask for funding and then you take the project as a complete, like it's a framework, it's working in your mind and you take it to the youth and you tell them, this is where you plug in. You give them at the short end of the stick. The whole time you've been planning yourself, you're sitting in your office, no youth is involved, board of directors, people under, I don't know, over specific ages, but when you take it to the community, now they're plugging in but they're detached from the process. What is this? You're telling them, do this, do that. They do, they do like toddlers because it's supposed to help the community. However, in the sense that the engagement is completely not there. So they're just doing it, they're going through the motions. You know, another organization will come, they'll do the same thing and you won't see change because they're not, like, they don't own it. But what I've realized is once you bring them to the table and then you tell them, okay, we won't, we have this, the other day I was applying for, I was reading a, sorry, a proposal by the Canadian government and it was saying, at the end of when your call for proposal it asks, in your intervention, did you consult the beneficiary? And then if you say yes, they ask you, what was their role? You know, so that you're not just consulting them, telling them, do you need this, we wanna bring it, you know, but why are they with you when you're conceptualizing your intervention? When you say, you're going to give them education for, I mean, or you're going to train them on skills for farming. Did you consult them and ask them whether that is what they needed or did you think that is what they don't need it to hear and then went to the donor? So I think that long end of the stick where people sit down in offices and conceptualize ideas and then the other end is where you give to the youth to plug in, they are detached, they don't own the process, they can't defend it, they can't, you know, plug into it, they can't put their own resources in time. Yeah, so I think that's one of the mistakes that I've, you know, I've seen. That's great. Did you? So adding to that, I would just like to say that inadequate skills to deal with the power structure when it comes to peace-building processes, I sometimes feel that really young people lack negotiation skills and that is very important for ideas to be on the table. When you have just 30 minutes to prove your point and you're not able to communicate well, you add that opportunity but you did not maximize it. So that is also where international organizations come in, even local organizations equip youth with skills on how to negotiate and how to communicate their ideas effectively. Great. I'm going to pivot now and we've listed a whole bunch of challenges. We're going to take a look at one intervention and it talks a little bit, your question was actually perfect because it speaks a little bit to the kinds of things we think there's opportunities to do. So we'll queue that up or maybe not. How do we make that the pre-eminating narrative? So I believe that it is very important for the work of young peace-builders to be appreciated for their effort to be shared and there should be a space of acceptance for young people to have confidence in telling their story. This can create a multiplier effect as you can see. Janet was able to learn about diversity and was able to see that even in her diversity, we still have commonalities that bind us all and she was able to share this with her parents. So that is creating a multiplier effect. So there is need for that space to be able to tell our stories, to use storytelling to inspire other people. That's great. Lena, this is a search for common ground project. Do you have thoughts on this issue of young leaders as peace-builders? Well, I think it's really about a story. So when I see this, I mean, we're actually bringing Janet and Miriam here later this year because they're still engaged and they're still together and doing beautiful things. But for me, it's just emblematic. So in Palestine, we've just finished season two of the reality TV, The President. So again, using reality TV to tell the story of what if we could elect a young Palestinian president, what would that look like and have everyone participate and imagine that narrative. And through the drama that we do in places as hard as South Sudan, it's like using theater as a way to say, well, what if a young person could step into a really heated conflict and their voice and their contribution? So I think that the bridge from the idea to reality does pass through the power of imagination, which creates the vision, which gives that motivation for people to feel confident and work together. It doesn't mean that there aren't other structural obstacles, but the power of enabling people to see themselves as leaders, see themselves as something that's greater than themselves and using all kinds of different platforms to do that is really powerful. And I think later on we'll talk about what that means in the context of violent extremism today, which is another really critical space where we and others are doing some important work about what is the youth space in the efforts to respond to violent extremism. Great. Thanks. Michael. Watching that, it just reinforces for me the importance of some of the presidential youth leadership initiatives that have come about in the last four years, the Young African Leaders Initiative, the one for Latin America, Weiss Sili for Southeast Asia. It's taken an investment in how do we, A, invest in the civic and entrepreneurial leadership skills, B, start to network them. And when I was in Uganda, we were meeting with the youth forum. And one of the Yali fellows talked about she was starting a new social enterprise for young women affected by gender-based violence. And she reached out to her colleague in Madagascar for certain plans on how to do the solar panel and to another Yali fellow in Ghana for another aspect of the program. And they're starting to network, as was mentioned by Caleb, using technology and smart ways to learn from each other. And then finally, the last part of it is looking for ways that we get seed capital to these great ideas and initiatives. And that is a big challenge. But that is a key part we have to figure out a solution to. So these leadership initiatives have to also push down from just the 10,000 Yali fellows or the 2,500 fellows in Weiss Sili down to how do we do this at a local level, building these capacities. And I know that USIP and IRI and many others are looking at leadership programs that aren't just based on a high level, but really community by community. How do we do that effectively? Caleb, what role technology? I mean, technology is definitely a tool that can be used to leverage youth conversations so that people can start listening. And I mean, just looking at this, it starts to flesh out the resolution 20 to 50 because the idea, like you had mentioned earlier, was to change the narrative, where youth are just either perpetrators or victims of conflict. But these starts to then show you that no way, there is another role they're playing. And that puts the idea behind it when some people just read the resolution and say, OK, yeah, we get the idea. But then when they see this, they say, OK, this is what it looks like. This is one of the aspects it looks like. In South Sudan, we have a radio program that focuses on the lives of young youth around South Sudan. And they're going through the daily challenges when trying to become peace builders. And it's similar to what's common ground doing is where we're asking them the question is, what if this person who was of this specific tribe applied for this job and was denied based on their tribe? What do you think should happen next? Because we want them to start thinking outside. Think critically, what does that mean in my community? So this shows that they can be peaceful. It's not just on a piece of paper. It's not on a piece of document. But it's actually happening right now around the world. That's great. Yeah, so that storytelling is really important. And you reference this tendency to think about young men as perpetrators of violence, young women as victims of violence. And this turns that on its head. It's about young women as change agents and bridge builders. And social media, with this and social media, then you have this spread where people from, like what was asked before, people from across the world, can see this happening in Lagos. It can happen in my backyard. Victoria, you were going to say something else. I was also going to point out the importance to talk about the possibility of violence being able to transition into peace and to talk about the healing process. Because we often don't talk about this. We hear about the violence. It goes viral on social media. But we also need to be talking about the healing process, that it is possible to build peace again, that it is realistic. And I feel that the program is set for common ground. The education program was able to show that through education, healing is possible. And peace, again, is realistic. Great. Thoughts, questions? Yes. Well, let's go to somebody who hasn't spoken yet. Then I'll come to you, sir. Up here. Well, sorry. I'm causing trouble. I'm making people walk all over the place. So watching this video seems like we're really avoiding the issue because none of these programs have worked, have made any impact. The conflicts are exasperated. It sort of seems to me like Stalinist propaganda, rather than genuinely looking at the structures that produce and reproduce these conflicts. Right? Thoughts? Sure. Well, I really thank you for sharing your perspective on that. That's great. It's interesting because I've been to Plato State a number of times. And if there's a place where I think we've turned the corner towards actually an incredible momentum towards Christians and Muslims working together to save lives, it's there. And we have enormous, we have the governor of Plato State has built in a peace architecture advisor within the government and hosts meetings every single week with Christian and Muslims in the house and Fulani and different leaders with the security forces. I mean, this dynamic is actually, and the number of lives that have been lost in Joss has radically dropped since this last peak of violence in 2011. So I would stand by the stories of Miriam and Janet quite with a lot of credibility and with a lot of certainty that this actually is working. As I said, we're in contact with them and they're continuing to build bridges. I want to say, though, it doesn't mean that there isn't a continued structural violence, but there's an incredible degree of change that's happened in Plato State over the last five years by many organizations, not just Search for Common Ground. It's really one of the successes that, as peace builders, we're proud of. Yeah, Michael. Just to change the region for a second look at Central America, which has been wracked by violence as well, the challenge in size is enormous in how we respond to violence by gangs throughout the Northern Triangle. And one of the other challenges, I think, that we have is we don't always invest enough in some of the research and impact evaluations. In the case of Central America, we did a random control trial across three main countries with Vanderbilt University. Really look at, does a comprehensive violence prevention community-based strategy work? And the results are clear in there. They were measured in terms of the specific components that it takes, both in terms of the youth engagement through things like the Youth Against Violence Movement, which is a youth-led movement across Central America, looking at ways of building community partnership structures through community violence prevention councils, combined with other aspects of education enhancement for dropouts and job training. It's a comprehensive approach. It's not a siloed approach. But when we do that well, the target communities where we applied that had dramatically less violence at the end of the three to five years than the control communities that we were measuring. And so there is evidence there. But too often, we don't do enough of a good job on measuring what is working, what isn't working, then curating that and getting that out to people to use that in their future design. So that's a weakness we need to work on. I would add two things. I think part of it is the frame through which you look at peace-building interventions. And we'll all acknowledge that there's a lot of violence in the world right now. That doesn't mean that at a community level, there aren't interventions that are making a difference for individuals and for communities on the ground. And it doesn't invalidate either the lens that says there's a lot of violence in the world or the lens that says that for those communities, for those individuals, for those families, this has significance. The other thing I would say is that at the end of the day, when we're looking at where we take interventions and how we measure that change, what we risk missing is the places where the violence doesn't break out. And it's the challenge we face with any endeavors to prevent the outbreak of violence because what you see in the media will always be where there was violence, where there was killing. And so the attempt is not to wash away the terrible stories of violence and the challenges that are there, but to balance it with the very real and successful peace-building and reconciliation efforts that are out there. So, and we had a question there and then we'll come back to it. Quick thought, it would be nice to see a future session like this one with a panel of youth leaders instead of adults. Not that you aren't all very capable and knowledgeable, but it would be very interesting to have that session. Yes, I know I understand, but I mean the full panel, youth leaders from all over the place. And another thought is any organization, but organizations that manage these programs and help with these programs it'd be great to see boards of advisors with youth leaders if that makes sense. Just a quick thought. Thank you, you guys are doing a great job. No, I think those are great ideas. I'm happy to cede the floor to anyone who'd like to come up. But we- I'm suddenly feeling very old from now. And our attempt is less not to have youth leaders but to provide this combined perspective from donors in civil society, donors in government and youth leaders having that conversation together. So I think your point is well taken. Thank you. I have a story. It's just walking from the union station all the way to the Peace Institute. It's a long walk. Well, it is. So stopping at the Peace Memorial, I saw women. Okay, I thought peace, yeah, it's related to whatever women is, female idea. Moving on walking, I saw a kind of colored school bus and it's a something like new school idea, high school idea. So I talked to a guy and they were traveling from LA all over the place to the capital and they are there from 10 on they said. So the bus was still closed and they were talking to different peoples in the country at different high schools. What are the problems? And I was like checking him a little bit and said, okay, what is the problem? Or what was like, not the problem, what is like the essence? You heard of all this talks. And he was like, give students a voice. So coming here, I was like give youth a voice. It's okay, there was something relating to that. I moved on and I saw this wonderful Washington monument and I was like, oh, an interesting guy. There's another one in Baltimore too. So who were his heroes or his teachers? That he could do something like this, that the U.S. can be or caretaker of the world for peace. So my questions are now, how can I as a non-youth, or I'm a little bit told for that, learn to listen to the young generation, female as male, I mean. So what do I need to provide? On the other hand, as a potential leader for the future, what, how can I become Cristiano Ronaldo? So what do they expect? Or is it just much smarter to offer Cristiano Ronaldo other soccer football heroes because that's a global youth movement, in my opinion, should we, them offer the next political leader positions? Yeah, that's the end of the story. Great, thank you. So how can he become Cristiano Ronaldo? Or Lionel Messi? Yeah. I think, and I'll go back to what I'd mentioned earlier that when addressing the youth, you have to look at them as segments. They're not as homogenous. And looking at that, we'll be able to give you an idea of what they're looking for in that specific community because let me give you a case example is in, for example, in South Sudan. So there's a radio program, right? That radio program targets a specific set of youth who listen to radio. But then we realize that when you focus on that specific, there are people you're living out, the youth you're living out, there's youth on social media who listen to the radios, but they'll be talking to each other. So it's like, what is your conversation saying? So moving the conversation from the radio, it's peeled over to Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, and all this. And the idea is to take the conversation through this different channel so that you can reach the youth at their own level. So that if you want to be Cristiano Ronaldo and you're talking to youth in the specific community is what, how are they communicating first of all? To start from there, how are they at their natural, like how are they communicating before you bring in any intervention to learn or to share ideas from? So that you can tap onto the existing structures already before bringing your new ones and see how can that leverage onto other existing structures around you. Because ideally is to bring an already, I can give you a solution and tell you, we did this in Kenya, go and do it. But then you realize in your home country, people don't listen to radio as much. People are more on Twitter. Or people are meeting in town halls to discuss about youth issues. So looking at the channel that through which they're communicating, I think is key because then you get to listen to all this chatter around specific issues. Just, yes, youth can is an example in Kenya. I mean, it's a project that was around for quite a long time. And it's a great example on how USAID and other partners said, all right, we're going to support a natural structure of youth voice through the 20,000 youth bunjays that were councils that allowed for youth to come together, talk about what were their priorities, build up through levels from the village council to the district, to the national council. Tremendous impact over one million young people whose voices were mobilized into action around economic empowerment, around civic action and participation. It's a great example of how we can support that in certain aspects. Yeah, Caleb, I want to ask you a question because I actually think that we're at a point where there's a real risk of fragmentation between different generations because of the way people communicate, receive and absorb information. I mean, I see it even, I have three sons and my older two are one is in college and one's in up in high school and my little one is in middle school. And even between them, I see a big difference in terms of how my little one receives and absorbs information relative to the ones that are on the cusp of adulthood. And I really worry, I mean, implicit in this conversation is that we could completely miss the boat with my little ones generation because he listens to different channels entirely and absorbs information differently. And I'm wondering if you observe that in your work with young people around the world and how we avoid that enormous gap which I see as getting wider and wider and wider. It's always a challenge with technology, like they say, as people are growing, technology is growing. So, I mean, 10 years back, I mean, the coolest app you have on your phone is the thing maybe in Kenya was an SMS. But now, people are communicating on different channels. You have like five messaging applications on your phone. And depending on what age group I think you are, you're using one specific one. But there are others who are being left out. And I think, I mean, I've seen that in my work. And the idea is to now look at if, I mean, the trends that youth usually, youth are very good in, like I said, peer learning. And that's why we see drug abuse is high because, I mean, I can convince my fellow youth to start drinking because I am drinking. I can convince. And that's why Facebook has one billion users. It's not Mark Zuckerberg who told us to join. It's our fellow friends, right, when we were joining. I joined as a youth anyway. But the peer-to-peer learning between youth is what is key that we need to leverage on. Because if I'm on Snapchat, that's the best app. I'll go and tell my friend, you know, Snapchat won't pay me. But that peer-to-peer, they'll ask me, what's so cool about it? And I'll convince them to join. And they'll join. And tomorrow we have one million movement. So that peer-to-peer learning and listening to, okay, what's new on the ground? How can we change this conversation? Because right now we're looking at breaking down content into, like, the resolution. How do we break it into infographs? Because as a document by itself, somebody who's in high school might find it, I mean, this is a UN sound so up there. But if it's in an infograph, I'm sure most of you have seen sustainable development goals are now in infographs. It's not a whole document. But when you just look at the internet, you say, you'll just see this multiple-colored picture of the infographs. Because there's a certain group they're trying to appeal to. They might be reading all the documents, but the potential fund is like what, 160 characters on Twitter, and then you send it and you're on to the next thing. So if you have a document like this, how then do you shape it? If you have a video like this, how do you plug it into all this? And I'll give a case example. In Myanmar, the Buddhists are using hate speech and videos of violence around the world to target Muslims. And what are they doing? They're using it on social media. And when we were talking to the youth there, we were asking them, are there positive narratives on social media? They say they are not. And such video starts to change the narrative because now on social media, then it breaks down the categories to actually the younger ones who are like, oh, they're girls like us doing something around the world. And with media now, you can basically bend and shape information to feed to different frameworks. Thanks. We'll take a couple of comments and then circle back. So in the back of the room, oh, well, okay. I won't make her run everywhere. Go ahead. Forgive me if this isn't over a generalization, but I do think it's fair to say that youth in general, there's a certain impatience about them slash us. And that's an asset and a weakness. I'm curious in your different programs, and this might be dovetailing with what was said earlier about these different lenses at which we look at a conflict. While you're allowing for them to be engaged, be participating in doing local change, are there systems involved or ways that you're preparing them to say, look, in 10 years, this is likely still going to be in flux. This is something we're working on in a very long scope where we're making a document at the UN and then it's gonna be possibly adopted there. And then from there, there are the processes that slowly unfold over the scope of years. How are you working with youth to prepare them for that? And if not, do you think there's a risk of disillusionment? Great, and we'll take a few comments so if we could go back there and then we'll come back. I think it's great what you guys are doing, but what can we do to bring more of this awareness out there to the youth people so that we can get more engagement to make that impact? Then we'll come, let's go in the middle here. So I just have two questions. First, I heard a theme in the video of forgiveness and I was wondering if the work with the youth is to encourage forgiveness, like born out of cross-cultural interaction and understanding of diversity and how through like almost negating your experience to forgive and then also a totally different route. What is being done in the US to implement some of what we are learning abroad from the international community and the youth in our own areas of domestic conflict? Hey, just a quick question on partnerships with social media and celebrities. I'm kind of wondering what's being done to work with say Facebook and Twitter to partner with Messi and Ronaldo and all these other stars that people are following to maybe push a message out on these conflict issues from their accounts, say, you know, Facebook would have the capability to do it just in Nigeria or just in Kenya or target those messages. I'm just kind of wondering if there are any efforts along those lines. I was gonna come back, but I feel guilty because we took the microphone literally out of your hand. So we'll get yours and then we'll come back so you can choose which one you wanna answer. Thanks very much. I'm curious actually just to piggybacking off of the first question, because so many of these programs take place, they're over a very long timeframe and the work is long and also leadership capacity building is a long project because M&E has been mentioned, I'm curious on the donor side, what can we do to maybe set better expectations earlier and have programs that operate over a longer timeframe and is that a trend that's happening because I know that's a big obstacle to program design a lot of the time and then also communicating the success of our programs. Great, great set of questions. Lena, why don't we start with you and work our way across? I think a lot of these questions are excellent and I think as a change maker, something that I do for myself and I facilitate people to do is tell a story of the future. So right now we're telling the story of what's happened since 1325. So December 2015, 2250, what does it look like in 2026? What is that story? And that story should be young people are partnering with all parts of society as respected partners in full, with full dignity and respect. They come up with a joint analysis of the problem. They decide how those resources should be utilized to tackle the problems that are most important in their society, including jobs, including healing and trauma, including structural violence. They're influencing where the resources should go. They're part of measuring the results and they are more capable than ever before to do all of that. And if we look back at what's happened with women as peace builders, in some ways there's been incredible progress, right? But there's also been a lot of window dressing. There's also been a lot of papering over the real underlying structural problems. So the opportunity of how do we get from a resolution to the story we wanna tell in 2026 and 2036 is where do we need to start? So the interagency working group is actually rolling out youth for peace with a four in the middle.info, which is gonna offer some really practical guidance about how can we take this and start with a set of workshops that young people convene with other youth groups in countries, with different government leaders to try and open that conversation. Open the conversation, come up with a joint analysis of the problem and then begin to identify where those priorities are. To do so in a way that builds young people's structures that are capable to manage resources in different ways that you've suggested, as well as talking about that representativity of the youth structures in that country. That's the vision that we wanna build. And us and many other partners, we're really offering some very, I mean, I'm looking at a document that gives you an agenda of how do you convene that first stakeholder meeting to really roll out 2250? Then the long-term commitment is essential. Peace builders we know, donors more and more know that it takes a long-term commitment. Why do people give up in the short term? It's because they don't believe it's working and because they believe that suddenly they have to shift priorities. What counters the tendency to give up is when you can have powerful benchmarking, capturing indicators of success along the way, and then enable people to understand what they're actually building and that's what health people stay in for the long run. One last thing I would say is that the notion of young people suddenly becoming like passive as peace builders is absolutely not the vision of 2250 and all the work that we're doing. At Search for Common Ground, we say we're not in any way trying to enable people to be less radical or even less extreme. The impatience of young people is absolutely the driving force that needs to help us all have a better world, right? So our sense of trying to shift the tactics around how can you change your society for the better is really what 2250 should enable, not a sense of like become peace and kind of forgive each other and sit down and wait for something else to happen. So that energy of the dynamism, the same reasons why people are tempted to join ISIS, tempted to join the gangs in Central America, that same energy is and must be the driving force for this kind of change. Right, Colin? Yeah, just to answer, start from a question. The first time I was starting my peace work, somebody asked me, is peace the goal or is it the root? I said, it's a goal. I mean, it told me peace is not the goal, it's the path to a goal. So once you have like a peaceful society, then what? It's a big question, because otherwise the youth fall, there's a risk of you falling back to whatever they were doing before. And one of the things like in Kenya, we did around the election prevention program with an organization called Sissini Amani, is we were looking at what are the underlying issues apart from the conflict. So we'd ask a question like, if there was no conflict, what would you be doing? And this was very different in different communities. And the idea was that after the peace, this is what you want to build on. So that you're not saying, okay, now we have peace in this community, it's resilient, but there's no like supporting structure for the youth to fall back on, because yes, I've put down my gun, but then what do I pick up next? I need something in my hands, youth are energetic, they want to be on the move. So like in one community, for example, we realized that most of them wanted to be farmers. It was as simple as this, I want to go out, I want to plant wheat in the field and I want to make my own returns. So we worked with the Ministry of Land and the farmers unions in these communities and what we're trying to do is, how then can we plug them into this peace building process so that it's not just isolated by itself and we expect that the youth will automatically know what to do next after this has this peace. So knowing what's underlying like the issue in that community and what the youth aspire to be, what they aspire to do in communities can then now set you on the track of, what do we now want to achieve in the next five years, in the next 10 years, so that then peace becomes a goal to that achievement. So that as you're working towards peace, you're also engaging other stakeholders who are not the youth per se, but also involved in other issues that the youth can be focusing on. On the aspect of how do we get the youth more involved, how do they take the message out? I think, I keep on saying this, I think the youth are the, like youth carry the message to other youth very easily than I think anybody else can and it's because they know how to talk to each other. And when I say that, I mean that in the same, in the sense that my messaging can be totally different for somebody who's younger than me, but the person who is there might be able to talk to that other person very easily. And how do you get them to do this? You get them to own the process. So if I own something, and I know like I've been part of this, if I give you an idea, for example, and then you go to your organization, you come back with a totally different project that is not associated with my idea, I'll feel cheated, right? But if I sit with you and you tell me why my idea can't work and we work together, I'll start feeling that I'm part of this process. I'll start feeling like, okay, my idea didn't work and these are the reasons why. And I've seen maybe resources or it's not plausible. And when I go back, I'll be able to talk to my community members and tell them, do you know why idea didn't work? It's because of ABCND. I'll know the language to use to them. But when it's from the top down saying, we were not able to pick your ideas, we were not able to implement what you had suggested because they still feel detached because at the back of their head, they feel cheated because this has been a cycle. Put out ideas and then nobody picks them up or use your ideas to get funding or use ideas to do something up there. They always say up there. So when you have them involved, they own the process and they're able to talk to one another and convince each other that, yeah, this is actually a good day, let's join. And that comes back to how do we leverage on Facebook? So what South Sudan we're currently doing is, we haven't gotten to the point where we've actually talked to Facebook, but Piste Club is doing something with Facebook. But at the community level, you know, looking at who are the influences at the community level on social media? You know, who are talking the same, who are using the same rhetoric as you are when it comes to peace building? Who are saying that youth can also be influences of peace? So looking at these pages, these groups, these individuals just start to leverage on them and say, hey, look, we're doing the same thing. We're in the same agenda. And, you know, we see areas of synergy. And I mean, for us, what we usually tell like the guys in South Sudan is, I mean, at least you'll get more followers, you know, because we'll share our followers. We recommend our followers to your followers. And, you know, so it's a win-win situation for both. And we've seen situations where, like now people start to mobilize around social media on certain specific issues, because before, as was mentioned earlier, you have people working in silos. But then through social media, it's like, are you guys are doing the same thing? You talk to the administrator of a page and you start seeing synergies, events, people mobilizing events as one group instead of as detached groups. So I think, yeah, on social media, that's what I... Great, thanks. Toria? Yeah, so on raising awareness about youth work in peace building, young people need more support, especially young youth who are working at the grassroot level, they need support, not necessarily financial, but resources, connecting them to partners who can collaborate with them to help them scale. It is not enough to just work as a peace builder, but it's also important to scale if you want the message of peace to be out there. Another thing is to also incorporate the values of peace in the school curriculum. And especially this is very crucial in Africa because we are lagging behind in our curriculum in Nigeria to be specific. And also using social media to tell real-time stories, using social media to put out the message of peace, to tell stories of young people who are doing peace building work and how much it has transformed their society. So all these are really crucial factors to help raise awareness about peace building. Great, Michael? Just to build off the last question related to the power of celebrity. Whether it's the Spice Girls, tell me what you want to raise awareness among young girls about the STGs that affect them, or we're about to do a large peace festival in El Salvador with David Guetta and many others for all of you who are over age 30 and you're like, who's David Guetta? We asked the young people who they wanted, they wanted David Guetta in electronic music. If you're over 40, go home, ask your kids who David Guetta is. But that's just one part of it because we can build a lot of motivation by getting powerful stories like that video or some of the celebrities. But once we get young people' attention, then it's, where do I go to take action? And that's the most frustrating part for so many young people around the world, whether you're in a small community in obvious state of Nigeria or you're in San Pedro Sules, now what? I want to do it, but no one wants to give me the opportunity. And that's where I think we really have to come together and say, how do we empower young people, train them to create their own opportunities to get connected? And a couple of ways we're trying to do that is, in the case of Panama, where I was working on a youth violence program, we created a platform called Ponte Analgo, Get Involved, where it was a national database of volunteer opportunities for young people and services in Africa, in Liberia. We were just launching something called SDG Youth Action Mapper, where young people were going out and with their handhelds mapping everywhere where young people could take action on the issue they cared about, the sustainable development goals, and then mobilizing other young people to find those opportunities on this growing virtual map of opportunities and even be able to measure the progress they're making in their communities toward the SDG. So creating those opportunities is key. We can't just build the motivation and not have the opportunities there, so. That's great. We've had such a vibrant conversation, we're running a little bit late, but one of the important, I'm gonna show this other video quickly because one of the important threads that came out in this discussion is how much we need the youth leaders to step up and drive their own change, and this is the story of one person who's working on that. Donor agencies and governments are doing in can and should do, and I think that at the end of the day, it's really about how we elevate the voices of leaders like Shubi and Victoria and Caleb to make that change. And I think embedded in that conversation and that video is also an implicit commitment to equality and driving that forward. So what I'm gonna do is give the final word to Victoria because I know that this is an issue close to your heart and relates a lot to the work that you're doing. So if you could please speak a little bit to that youth leadership and how to drive forward that change. Thank you. So when we talk about Resolution 2250 and when we talk about youth issues, we are not only talking about youth issues as being dominated by male alone, we are also putting in the gender perspective into this conversation. So we need to see the role of girls and women in peace building, it is very, very crucial. They play significant role in the progress of our society and their efforts must also be recognized and celebrated. Hillary Clinton made a quote, she said the problems that we face today are too big and too complex to be solved to tell the full participation of women. So I believe that to drive the Resolution 2250 forward is very, very crucial for us also to think about how we can include children, youth, male and female and also to include other important stakeholders as well. Final thought or comment from the audience? You're all speechless. Great, well then thank you for joining us all for this conversation today. Thank you to Alison Malowski and Aubrey Cox for putting together the program. And we look forward to seeing you again next month, yeah? But we have a number of, oh, you have the website now. Website for our 60 day campaign on the intersections of youth, gender and peace is on USIP's website, it's youth leading for peace and equality. So it's usip.org, backslash programs, backslash projects, backslash youth leading for peace and equality. And we have exercises, we have videos, we have any number of resources on gender and youth and information about our peace day challenge. And I think that a lot of the questions in here were about what we can all do to drive this process forward. And one of the things that we at USIP are really trying to do is use International Peace Day next week as a day to take action. To Collib's point, if we all simply forward the stories of some of these peace builders, and there's a lot of videos that USAID has created as well, we will start to change and transform that narrative. So think about that as a day you can add to that conversation and really advance the discussion around youth as builders of peace and leaders around the world. So thanks again for joining us.