 Well, welcome everyone. Thank you so much for being here. This is a great group, and we're really excited about this conversation today. My name is Nicole Golden. I am the director of the Youth Prosperity and Security Initiative here at CSIS, which is Run in Partnership with the International Youth Foundation. We launched this initiative in January. And this is a really important conversation as part of our public event series that we've been running. I want to read this quote from Secretary Clinton from a speech she gave in Tunisia last year. There are underlying dynamics that are affecting young people everywhere, changes in demographics and technology, economics and politics that are bringing together this unique moment in history. Young people are at the heart of today's great strategic opportunities and challenges, from rebuilding the global economy to combating violent extremism and to building sustainable democracies. So we at CSIS firmly believe that these trends continue to be true and that we think that there are tremendous opportunities in young people to explore, which is why we launched this initiative to really explore these near and long-term geopolitical, economic, societal trends of young people and really see young people as central to global development outcomes as well as to the landscape of global prosperity and security. So a critical part of that conversation, especially given some of the global conversations around development policy, the post-2015 development agenda I'm sure we'll get to and a number of other major economic look forwards, look ahead, is to understand and to talk about how the US government is thinking about and incorporating young people into its approach to development, to diplomacy, and thinking about our national security efforts. So we are delighted to have with us today, I'm very delighted to have, dare I say, a very youthful panel with me to discuss these issues. Friends and colleagues that I know have really been leaders in championing these issues in their respective agencies and so we're really lucky to have them with us today. We have Andrew Cedar, senior director for global engagement at the national security staff at the White House. Zenat Rahman, who is the secretary special advisor for global youth issues and directs the office of global youth issues at the Department of State. And of course, Steven Feldstein, who is the director of policy at the US Agency for International Development. So I'd like to just again welcome you all here today. We're gonna start by asking each of them to say a few words and give us an overview of where their agencies are in terms of thinking about and youth issues and addressing youth and then we'll engage in a conversation and then we'll open it up to all of you. And I also just wanna say again, welcome to you all and also to our audience online. So Andrew, over to you. Thanks, Nicole and thanks everybody for being here. I'm gonna keep this very brief so we can open this up to a conversation but just wanted to start the panel off with a little bit of a broad global view of how the administration sees this, why it has become increasingly central, sort of both before and after a number of global events that have happened over the last number of years, which I think has brought this to the fore but really the way we were thinking about it actually before a number of these events and how that's playing out across diplomacy, development and defense and then we can talk in greater details, you know, and Steve can delve in a bit more to what we're doing at aid and state at a more programmatic level. First of all, I think you see this is a huge issue and it has been from the beginning. This is something that's in the president's DNA, not necessarily exclusively because of global events but if you look at the way he became president, it's a pretty unexpected event. Very much happened because of young people, because of their optimism, enthusiasm and energy and quite frankly, it's not just those things, those have been around with young people for a very long time but actually their capacity, their resources at their disposal and the ability to actually organize and make things happen. So he came into office knowing full well that networks of citizens and particularly young people had the ability to shape global events and not just kind of youth events but real global politics and social norms. You look more globally when the president came into office, some of these things seem incredibly obvious now but they weren't at the time. Certainly the demographic changes that are happening and again, these things don't happen overnight. You can see demographic bulges coming for a long time but they begin to hit at a certain point and that's obviously one piece of this, the fact that when we all debate what the statistics are but 60 plus percent of people under the age of 30, 35 you choose your statistic but whatever your statistic, those are pretty striking numbers and at a certain point, and I would challenge those in this room to think about this too, that doesn't become youth policy, that just becomes people policy, right? When you're talking about 60 plus percent of the population and especially in a number of the places where our foreign policy challenges are most acute, those numbers are even higher. So first there's this demographic piece. Second obviously people know this, the communications revolution that's happened around the world, the ability of people to connect to shape stories far from where they live is something that's fundamentally changed global affairs, it's fundamentally changed the ability of people to influence our interests, whether it comes from radicalization from across the world, whether it comes from economic opportunity and business creation, these are things now where people can connect and collaborate much more easily than they could before. And lastly probably as a consequence of those first two, we've seen huge changes over the last 20 years in political systems around the world and so obviously if you take a slightly longer lens on this, the number of democracies writ large has certainly proliferated and even in those countries that aren't democracies, I think we see the role of public opinion and therefore youth opinion since quite frankly they're often very vocal, often constitute the majorities of populations as something that's critical, that's shaping internal social and political dynamics in countries around the world and these are things that really used to be the province of elites in societies and for that matter hard security experts within governments and those sorts of questions, this is now a question that has spilled over dramatically into our defense policy, our national security policy as well but all three of those forces I don't think tell the full story about why this has come to the fore because certainly demographic changes have happened before, demographic youth bulges have happened before, certainly in isolated geographies. I think what you've seen now that's really fascinating is for a long time there was a really big gap between the energy and enthusiasm of young people and even perhaps their numbers and their ability to actually do anything about it so you know there was sort of a mentality of you wait your turn, well the truth is now the waiting is a little bit shorter than it used to be and part of the reason for that is it used to be really expensive to shape people's opinions globally, you needed radio transmitters, you needed the institutions of the state or state broadcaster or some private broadcasting entity to start businesses often particularly in the manufacturing world, you needed huge capital costs, you needed the ability to start a factory, get iron ore, all the stuff. We now live in a world where a combination of certainly on the broadcasting side, probably most of you right now are broadcasting anyway and your reach is just as much as CNN or anyone else, anyone in the world can get it, it's a huge difference and again it closes that gap between kind of idealism and ideas of youth and their capacity to actually do something about it. Similarly on the economic side, you look at billion dollar companies right now, certainly there are some that you still need some pretty expensive inputs but there are many that are reshaping the way commerce is done, the way people transact online with very very little in the way of startup costs and so you have this closing gap between the aspirations of youth and their ability to do something about it. You compound that though with the changing nature of the international system in that the issues that we're facing as a country, as a government are issues that you can't necessarily put two diplomats in a room, work out a treaty and call it quits and move on to the next thing and so actually getting out and engaging with young people is a huge priority for us because the ability of public opinion to move these issues, the ability quite frankly to sway a young person somewhere in the world to give them opportunity that they can realize their aspirations rather than be frustrated without a job or an education that they don't know how to apply. So these things are now front and center. The other thing that I will say is this fits very much into the president's vision because he's inherently someone who has tried time and time again to really look towards the future and it's on the basis of that that he was elected it's on the basis of that that if you look around the world wherever he goes, I mean I just thought about the last couple months he was in Mexico and spoke to you he was a youth audience he was in Israel and spoke to a youth audience he was in Northern Ireland and spoke to a youth audience he's gonna be in Africa starting in a couple hours and this Saturday we'll host another youth focused event and for him this is a way to begin talking to the people who are really gonna shape the future who are important stakeholders 20 years from now but also are important shapers right now and so on the Africa front of the president's going now a great example of this is his desire in 2010 when a number of African countries were undergoing their 50th anniversaries of independence rather than calling ahead of state summit rather than reaching out to lots of guys who had been in power for sometimes almost even 50 years he decided to invite 120 young people who were changing the continent to the White House for a direct dialogue and again I think that speaks very much to his approach to these issues which is young people are not the people who we talk to or about and say oh well one day you guys will shape this and oh one day you'll inherit this but right now they're shaping things and so I think that really is encompassed by the president's approach to these issues thank you very much recognizes that when you look across diplomacy, development, defense we'll hear in more detail they can't make progress on these issues without 60% of the world and so youth are certainly baked into what we do but I also think we're trying to take a broader perspective now which isn't just how do we think about youth as youth but more how do we think about youth as critical stakeholders in the issues that most impact us and so continuing to hive it off in its own world actually I think sometimes does a disservice to it and so thinking about it holistically is another piece of this and so when the president goes places and talks to young people people always ask well how come you're talking to young people isn't that kind of weird and why would you do that and isn't that not really what's important I think for us it's a holistic part about how you advance your mission around the world and you'll see it again this week you'll see it as the president continues to talk about these issues whether they're honestly domestic or foreign I think you saw yesterday decided to go to Georgetown to do the climate change speech again because he sees young people as critical stakeholders not just in the inheriting of a world but as people who can really move public opinion corporate action for that matter in ways that really matter so it's an issue we think about quite a bit it's an issue that's at the forefront of our minds across again those three areas of national security and looking forward to a good conversation about this Thanks Andrew just to add quickly a comment and some color on the technology piece I just find this interesting statistic there was a recent survey that was done by the Financial Times with Telefonica Company and they surveyed 12,000 millennials aged 18 to 30 in 27 countries across six inhabited continents if you will and just very quickly, 87% said that technology has made language barriers easier to overcome another 70% said technology creates more opportunities for all and 83% said that technology has made it easier to get a job so just to add a little color on that technology point which I think is so crucial and we'll probably come back to that in some of the other points you raise Zenat please Thanks Nicole It's a pleasure to be in an audience at a think tank in DC that's mostly young people that doesn't happen that often so I'm really happy to be here with you guys today you know I think maybe to put a little bit of a finer point on some of what Andrew was saying about how we view young people and that you know it's not I think what may have been before is you know a constituency that was impacted by our programs or our policies and I think increasingly there's a recognition that young men and women around the world represent a vital constituency whose potential remains untapped or undertapped in the pursuit of advancing our strategic interests our US strategic interests abroad I think part of that recognition is obviously the leadership of the president and that's why an office like this was created which is you know an office that's only a couple of years old and a position that's only a couple of years old you know as we look at the external reality we realize that you know as we move our policies from young people as passive you know parts of the population to key actors who we have to figure out how to engage that they represent a new center of power and influence as Andrew said that that are the current key actors in critical global issues so whether we're looking at the protests in Brazil or Turkey the stuff that happened in India in December of course the Arab Spring protests that happened in the Middle East that young people are the you know making up the vast majority of people who are leading those and obviously are parts of those because of the demographic reality but really you know are the ones who are turning that kind of that key to unleash that enthusiasm, energy, excitement the online piece into an offline dimension and so you know looking at this cohort or this generation of young people just a couple of reflections one is that this is the biggest youth cohort that has ever existed and this may also be the first time that young people think of themselves as a global cohort not as you know individually living in their local space but actually as connected to a bigger story and I'm guessing that most of you feel that way too probably that you have a global consciousness that many people around the world many young people around the world are growing up in the middle class for the first time in their families and that obviously human health and well-being have had many advances and people are you know living longer than they have before and then I think this part about technology that is digital natives that young people are the most savvy creators and consumers of technology and its products so again how does that online piece kind of you know how has this triggered the all of the offline activity or the real world activity that we see and that you know I think unlike previous generations young people are navigating a world that is in a constant state of change and they are more aware of this change because of the greater access to information and so whereas you know the definition of success or a successful livelihood in a previous generation may have been you know the same job for 20 years a good retirement you know it may have meant things that just are not the reality for young people today and so you know all of our foreign policy priorities if you look at you know the secretaries pushed around the Middle East peace process the president going to Africa and you know of his three priorities engaging youth is one of his core priorities of the strip of his you know I think a part of a realization that young people have a direct influence or have an influencing role in us being able to move and shape our policies and so we are advancing a strategy that institutionalizes our ability to engage this cohort as a set of actors in our foreign policy landscape and that's new for the State Department looking at things that are beyond you know diplomat to diplomat engagement so some of the ways that and I'm going to speak broadly about the ways we're doing that but kind of happy to dive deeper into the programmatic ways during the Q&A but we really tried to focus on building the institutional capacity of our diplomatic core to create strategies around engagement so that means our offices in the field that's going to the Foreign Service Institute and you know doing trainings around youth plus you know name any cross cutting issue because youth cross cut all of them you know we've tried to institutionalize frameworks for youth engagement through youth councils we have 66 around the world through our embassies where we are looking for feedback you know opinions from young change makers so that's one strategy is just looking at our diplomatic core and how do we improve our engagement there another piece of this is establishing a multi-stakeholder approach to addressing the key challenges that young people face and so there are not youth policies for policy sake but young people are disproportionately affected by some of the major you know issues in the world particularly the one about around economic opportunity and so I think the one constant and the travel that I do is the lack of economic opportunity that exists for young people wherever I go and so a multi-stakeholder approach to us means the public sector it means you know us foreign governments multilaterals private sector NGOs and young people themselves and then if you look at any one of these dimensions you know private sector actors can't they can't create all the jobs that are needed young people by themselves can't do it with you know the skills that they might try to get themselves we as government can't do it alone but in order to you know actually move the needle on this that it has to be this approach so we've looked at creating frameworks around particular around the lack of economic opportunity and that we're looking at innovative approaches to partnership directly with young influencers and so I think a great example of this is partnership through entrepreneurship and this is something either of us can kind of speak more about during Q&A I've had the good so today's my one-year anniversary in this position which I'm excited about but so I've had the good fortune to kind of travel and engage with some of our youth council members and do a lot of you know engagement with young people and engagement with my colleagues in the field and just some of the takeaways and the things that I hear I want to just offer which one is that you know the young people are looking at the U.S. to facilitate and convene different sets of actors around big issues around economic growth and development around democracy and governance around 21st century state craft and in many countries we are the only ones that are convening them we are the only ones that are bringing young influencers together to hear what they have to say you know we and so that's one point second point is that I hear a lot about the need for role models and for platforms so role models that are indigenous within their peer group that are tackling the same challenges that they are and that they need platforms by which they can speak about the change that they are making in the communities that they're in and then I think the third piece kind of brings it back to all of you which is the American dimension in this that as I said I would say that millennials today from both sides deeply benefit from the engagement with their peers and we've helped facilitate those networks for change makers and that I think there's an equalness to that relationship now which is that young Americans meeting young Ugandans or young Indians has a value proposition on both sides of the equation and so that's something that I know is particularly interested in which is how do we pull in the assets that we have in the US and part of I think one of our biggest assets are you guys so I'll stop there. Thanks I'm really happy to be part of this panel as well and Nicole actually came from our office and where she spearheaded and led the creation of our first ever youth and development policy so it was a real pleasure to collaborate with her on that and come back here and talk a little bit about the issues that she cared so passionately about from the USAID standpoint is now able to use CSIS as a forum for that. So just a few points I'll be talk a little bit about the development perspective when it comes to youth and you know while my overall portfolio and job responsibility extends beyond the youth issue to sort of broader policy issues facing the agency on development you know I think the youth issues is particularly mapped given how much I see cross-cutting links and an important emphasis on the youth issue as it relates to a whole slew of things that we are concerned with whether we're talking about extreme poverty whether we're thinking about broader development and national security issues whether we're looking at climate change food feed the future global health there's a common link that I think runs there and our ability to understand and harness and capture the youth issue in a more consistent way is extremely important you know I think like many other agencies and policy makers globally you know we're struggling as an agency to really understand better how the evolving nature of different things in our world what shape and form is going to take we certainly know it's more multipolar it's both younger in some respects and it's also aging very quickly in other areas and so that's a very difficult demographic challenge you know has several other and Andrew mentioned the rise of the middle class is an issue that both brings a ton of potential but also has ramifications in terms of displacement and broader access to political participation issues we have a growing amount of individual empowerment I think that's been really enhanced by the world technology as well and a general diffusion of power but again that also leads to bigger issues when it comes to better understanding the role of the nation state vis-a-vis other non-state actors and so forth and then we also have the rise of urbanization of cities different ways that we're organizing spatially which will really come to play a role you know I'm really seized by the fact that in the worldwide population today about 7 billion over 50% of the population is under 30 the vast majority of which live in the developing world and the vast majority of those countries in which USAID has a presence and so you know from that alone it emphasizes pretty clearly to us that in order to have success in terms of achieving our primary development goals we have to understand how those link to youth you know I think there are a slew of issues that I think we will need to take extremely seriously as we move forward from a developmental standpoint there's the issue of a million youth entering the workforce each month in Sub-Saharan Africa and India there's the notion that unemployment for youth is three times higher than adults and we have around 75 million youth who are currently unemployed worldwide which you know is a very I think worrisome number we also have issues like youth ages 15 and 24 represent 45% of new HIV cases and are also 33% less likely to be part of the formal financial sector including having a bank account youth are unduly affected by violence with 250,000 homicides of youth taking place last year but I also think that's important to think about some of the mythologies that surround youth when it comes to developmental aspects for example 86% of countries in conflict have populations that are less than 30 or majority of the populations less than 30 and while 14 of the 20 failed states at least as listed in the farm policies failed states index have a median age of 19 years you know in of itself that doesn't mean that there's a problem or an issue associated with youth what it does mean however is that we are dealing with broader spectrum of institutional failure that's symptomatic of problems when you don't have a cohesive society or a stable society or the right type of opportunities thereby leading to exacerbating a cohort that doesn't feel that they have opportunities to otherwise engage economically, politically or socially so part of that is really trying to think about that in a more holistic way to not pinpoint a group and say there's a problem therefore we need to directly target solutions on a narrow aspect but to think about more broadly what does it mean in terms of mainstreaming and integration what does it mean when we think about youth populations being part of the development solution overall so that's really part of the goal you know I think it's not only to focus on specific programs and activities but think about the integration mainstreaming within our programming and to also think about the integration from youth to adulthood and think about youth as potential drivers of that change. I also want to talk for a second about youth and extreme poverty agenda so one of the things that has really energized the agency since the State of the Union this year was the President's call for the eradication of extreme poverty over a generation so that's a huge task a huge calling we're starting to disaggregate and better understand and approach it in conjunction with other partners what we have been able to determine is that really there's sort of two focal points in terms of that issue the first is sort of looking at extreme poverty pockets in middle income countries so places like India Indonesia, China whether it continues to be large populations that have been less affected by economic growth so far the second is a very large cohort of fragile states either fragile by governance fragile in terms of general conflict fragile in terms of just poor institutions the former group the middle income countries is one that probably as an agency we have less that we can affect and most likely according to most projections those are places that over the next generation should be able to bring extreme poverty level down to a pretty small degree what it is the fragile states the places that we hear about in the news the ones that are in conflict the ones that are slowly emerging from civil war and so forth the ones that also have to have an extremely large youth population that without potentially productive employment or opportunities it is those that we are most concerned about as an agency and it is those that we need to devise the right kind of strategies with our partners to understand and tackle and to think from our standpoint for a second that we'll be able to get at this issue understanding, incorporating and being consistent about how we engage with youth is a fallacy and won't get us to the overall goal so as we think about this broader objective you know for the government and globally that the President has put out that the World Bank President has reiterated as well that is really a charge for us finally just to talk for a minute or so about how on a more programmatic level we're responding to youth. So we came out and launched a policy in November again thanks to Nicole we and her team we now have an active youth coordinator Mary Ann Yerkes who unfortunately couldn't be here today but it really is serving as our interim point person in terms of bringing together different efforts and really coming up with an action plan for figuring out how we institutionalize and carry forward and implement some of the key elements of strengthening youth programming mainstreaming and integrating or even thinking about the cross kind nature of youth with some of the other policies that have come out whether on gender whether on education, whether on resilience countering violent extremism so on or so forth you know we need to we need to continue stock taking and understanding where we are when it comes to our youth programming we need to establish a baseline both in terms of understanding and then also understanding how we can monitor and capture lessons learned from that we also need to make sure that we support and strengthen youth engagement platforms across the board finally there's I think a big international component as well that's a critical thing to keep in mind many of you probably know about the post 2015 Millennium Development Goal process we are still early days in terms of where that is but many people are saying if there isn't a good way to incorporate and consistently approach the youth issue in the context of these second stage goals then we will have lost a big opportunity in terms of ensuring that that's part of the conversation and really emphasize in terms of policy approaches going forward so that's another opportunity that I would encourage both those in the audience to really think about but even from our standpoint we are certainly cognizant of and we'll be watching I think with that I will turn it back over to the Q&A and your questions Thank you Steve, Zenat and Andrew we are going to have I think a great question and answer session from our audience and you laid out a lot of really the critical issues as to why this is such an important issue for all of us it's such an important group to consider and I think in your comments it also really highlighted to me what I really heard from your comments is that link between the development issues and sort of the national security issues and if you we didn't get a chance to go into it in the introductions but if you've had a chance to look at the bios of really all of us quite frankly in a little more depth you'd see there's a little bit of a musical chairs among the panel here I was formerly USAID and before that at the State Department with Andrew as my colleague before he was at the White House for her current role in happy anniversary that was not planned but very happy we're all here to celebrate with you on that was a colleague of Steve's in mind at USAID so suffice to say and Steve had a long and distinguished career on Capitol Hill before coming back to USAID so suffice to say there's said we've played different roles and so with that you know I'd be interested you know Andrew for you to start I'd love you to comment on as you've all moved forward in your agencies where has been the coordination and what do you think are some of the opportunities and challenges in coordination within your own sort of agencies between sort of the different institutions of the US government and how do you see that as an opportunity sort of moving forward to really harness the different resources of the USG to sort of advance use It's a big question a couple of quick things from a variety of perspectives and one of the things that I left out that I think is important and obviously everybody here probably knows some of the bizarreness with which the US government functions in terms of where resources sit, how interagency coordination works but one of the things that's always a fairly reliable driver of how we actually formulate agendas in this is as much as we're kind of intrigued by and want to deal with these transnational issues a lot of times our priority setting comes down to bilateral, regional questions things where we've actually got something more concrete to be dealing with and one of the interesting things that has helped actually put this a little higher on the agenda is not simply us looking at the demographics and saying boy this is really something we should deal with or us looking at the global trends and saying we need to elevate youth but it's actually been in a lot of cases particularly in the last three or four years other countries coming to us and so if you think about the nexus of issues certainly if you are depends what region you're in but you can look around the world right now and say okay I have a problem just from a very simple like maintenance of power standpoint if I want to stay where I am if I like the system as it is I need young people to have opportunity because I understand that when they don't when there aren't productive outlets for their energies and talents there are serious issues and not just issues that people blog about but people do stuff about and so when you look at the nexus of those issues it becomes things like education innovation economic growth and entrepreneurship and things so to be honest with you one of the places that people look is the United States so we've got governments coming to us very frequently saying this is something we really want your help on and it also dovetailed quite well with the president's pledge certainly back in Cairo and since to really focus on issues of mutual interest with other countries because this is a place where we align and quite frankly when you look at it from a domestic standpoint we also benefit from this when you look at statistics about who's founding new companies in Silicon Valley it's strongly in our interest if you look at the administration's perspective on immigration getting the world's young talented best and brightest and so those issues this is a circuitous answer to your question but those issues have also come up in the bilateral context and so when you talk about how does the interagency process work and how do we see it from various angles certainly there is a baseline of programming that goes on at agencies that we've turned more and more towards explicitly youth demographic and I think through those lenses of things like education and that ranges and Steve can say this with much more authority than I but ranges from primary education access and literacy all the way through vocational training higher ed preparing people for the workforce it also obviously has quite a lot to do with civilian security and a number of other issues so we have those things running as a baseline but we also try and layer on top of that and that's one of the places where I think when it comes to the White House trying to do this we actually don't much to people's surprise hold the resources in the US government we hold a certain amount of interagency policy making coordination and authority and so what we can layer on top of this is one trying to ensure that we have a coordinated approach to these issues but also the bully pulpit of the presidency and so that's part of the reason why we try to emphasize on these trips when the president goes out talking to young people not solely because the 400 people in that hall are going to make a difference in every issue everywhere in the world but because we believe that the symbolism of that is important and so that's where the White House can help to also elevate these issues but realistically getting back to your question about how we sort of adjudicate the various priorities certainly it helps when at a regional and bilateral level countries are coming to us saying we need your help on this issue we want your help on this issue and certainly makes it a lot easier for us to operate so and I'm sure from each of our own angles we see it from a slightly different perspective yeah and I mean I so I would agree with that there are mechanisms to do our diplomacy and I think success for for me for an office like mine is to be able to integrate that into the places where those streams of work happen which are regional and functional bureaus and so you heard me kind of talk about the institutionalization I mean I think that's not a glamorous piece of this but that's a really important piece of this which is that we want to change the way we're doing diplomacy to make sure that it's using all of our assets that we have in our diplomatic toolkit that takes time change over time because of the massiveness of the institution and so I think we have a recognition that we want coherence internally within our youth engagement efforts so that it mirrors kind of the challenges that we're facing externally and I'd say you know when I'm in the field oftentimes there is really great coherence between our USAID mission and our embassy particularly in countries where this is one of the priorities of our mission you know or this is one of the priorities of the country and so it's both a top down approach you know looking at the secretary's leadership and the president's leadership and then it's a bottom up approach which is looking at the best practices that have happened for us in places like Morocco and I'm sure there are other places as well to see where it's kind of also coming up that we can socialize and institutionalize that change so that's one thing and then I think the other thing is that we have different stakeholders within functional and regional bureaus and some of my colleagues are actually here today who look at the programmatic aspect of this who look at you know from a regional point of view what does this mean and we all coordinate or at least we attempt to coordinate so similar to this panel you're looking you know at the places where you have somebody who can be somebody who's kind of pushing the bureaucracy forward. So I would just add a few small things I mean I think one thing to sort of emphasize is that the idea of engaging with youth isn't a new one for the agency I remember even back in the early 2000s working in the field engaging on unaccompanied minor programs where essentially you had youth who were separate from their families due to the genocide in Rwanda who were trying to reintegrate back in the communities working in transit centers as far away as Congo Brazzaville and so there was a real focus not only in ensuring that they had that they were formally reintegrated with some semblance of their prior existing communities but also to really target and focus programs directly on particular needs that they might have both as from the trauma side of things to the educational vocational opportunity side as well as sort of getting them to buy in once again the educational participation whether it was youth councils as a stepping stone to more formalized access so those type of efforts have been ongoing part of the fabric of USAID for a long time but what is different and what has changed is that we're attempting to make it more consistent for every situation like I described there are many others where I think the past history has been less of an understanding and awareness of how to actually approach youth issues so one of the jobs that we need to continue doing internally certainly at USAID is to really inculcate that understanding across a broader array of missions and there are different ways that we're considering doing that one aspect is you really look to focus your efforts in a few missions where there's both a sort of groundswell of understanding and commitment to the issue you look to create sort of a model where you have good integration and mainstream with other things you have the right type of engagement and then you look to export that to other missions as a showcase that's one way to approach it more broadly I would say the idea that we need to deepen and sustain our engagement we need to build off the policy we need to make sure that we have a you take what Marianne is currently doing and have it more institutionalized within the agency that it can extend beyond the current administration to whatever comes next I think those are the challenges that we face but I think as a starting point I was sort of taking stock of where we've come in terms of the youth issue and looking at all the different ways that we're attempting to engage whether it's even looking at the president's Africa trip different initiatives associated with that whether it's looking at the broader outreach that Andrew mentioned and I really do think it's unprecedented and I think it may have been born out of the experience from the campaign and the election but I think it's much bigger than that now it extends to demographics in the way we're really trying to grapple with the fundamental development issues that we view of the day Great, no thanks Steve for the points you've been talking about in terms of the importance of integration and some of the policy integration assuming that you've done it at USAID one issue that I've noticed lately in particular within the young people cohort is it seems to be in the global scale something of a separation almost between youth agenda and advancing girls and young women and I'm just curious picking up on that point on your point about integration, mainstreaming how do you see this sort of advancing youth issues and advancing girls and young women's issues and how can we ensure that we're doing them together and not so just sort of thoughts from all of your respective purchase if you will Maybe I'll start with a couple of comments as quickly as you know So I think just as we look at gender issues is not only encompassing one side of the equation only relating to women and girls but also the behavior of males by the same token I don't think we can look at only at youth issues and only focus on youth and not think there's a broader ecosystem in which they need to engage and which really is part and parcel of how we ought to approach things and so I think that there is a well certainly that there is a need to continue pressing that point and I think the more we can break down silos and I think that's good for the gender issue overall that it's not even just youth but it is across a host of boundaries and I've had discussions internally about that I think that's something that people are taking seriously but you know I take Nicole's point very well I mean she's seen it she's lived it and it'll take time I think having you know the policy in place is a really important signal of the administrator's belief in the issue I think continuing dialogue based on that I think continuing to work with the youth advocates and working group that are carrying on implementation having building momentum from what Marianne is doing is going to be critical but you know it's not a solved issue it's one that we need to keep working on day by day I think from my perspective from the state perspective I think the looking at youth as a set of actors is more nascent than the women and girls issues and so there's just been a lot more I think in terms of looking at women and girls it's been far more concrete on what the priorities are so we've established gender-based violence you know women peace and security that women's economic empowerment is key and that you know all of those things have metrics for success built on to the back end of those you know so what does the society look like if half the women or if half the population is not empowered what you know you can actually look at you know political positions and say this is how many women you have and I'm sure to actually frankly to do that with youth issues I think youth issues do tend to be more diffused but I think we have lessons important lessons that we can learn from women and girls and I think just practically speaking in the work that I do they do tend to be better coordinated you know particularly because I do a lot of girls things as well and like you said I mean I think all stakeholders are important it's not just looking not that it's ever just looking at women and girls for the you know key stakeholders in that process no it's a great point and I think you bring up another challenge that I think we all face in this advancing these issues is is understanding is data and evidence and sort of understanding where young people are doing well what we know what we don't know what works what doesn't work and I know that that's something that you all are looking at so one more question before we go to the audience just to pick up again on something that you said Z not which is you know when we talk about whether it's in the USAID policy or Andrew you commented on this so well the importance of consultation participation and I think there's when we think about that in terms of advancing young people in our farm policy young people abroad in our farm policy and obviously looking at the audience here it's important to think about what that means in terms of advancing participation and consultation with and harnessing really the challenge of you know young people here in the US in our development and diplomatic work so before we go to the audience just if there's any other further thoughts from Steve Andrew on sort of you know how we're thinking about this sort of engaging American young people in the work you do there are a couple pieces to that question I'll start in reverse order obviously American young people are a huge constituency for us when you look at people who are actually just by volume the number of people who can participate in US government programs versus the number of Americans who on their own are either connected virtually or traveling or doing service abroad the face of our country is often American citizens and the face of our country to young people is even more frequently American citizens and so it's actually a huge problem that I think the US government has is that quite frequently when a problem is presented we tend to think that we are the solution to it and so we look at what resources we have what programs we have the reality is there are 300 million Americans who can take a lot of this forward extremely well to the first part of the question about kind of making sure that there's some ground trees to what we do I actually think this is an area where there are serious issues because there's a temptation sitting in the United States to be on Twitter to hear what a often very small percentage of a population is saying and say ok well we know what the young people in that country are saying and the truth is it's a much more diverse demographic than the people who are on Twitter and so certainly for us when you talk about consultation when you talk about informing our policy with some reality of what's going on on the ground we need to be very careful to not be swayed by what we're hearing and I think the Arab Spring is a great example of this where I think you look at a country like Egypt where I think a lot of people were swayed very early on by what was perceived to be a national movement what was perceived to be a very deep commitment across a society and not to say that it wasn't shared but that coalition fractured relatively quickly and I think that when you look at the stories that the western press in a lot of these places sort of perpetuate it's a sexy story right now to look at that sort of ultra empowered often urban very connected elites and say this is what young people are doing it's a twitter revolution it's whatever and so I think it's very incumbent upon us to really try and get a little bit deeper than that to understand what we're doing the second piece of that though comes down to the real question and this is a little bit related to your women and girls versus youth and I won't comment on that one but this reality that I think people think sometimes the US government has either unlimited resources or we can do that and that and you guys all know we live in an era of austerity when we can't do everything and those of you from who are partners with the US government recognize that there are real budgets attached to this and there are real choices that are made and there are costs and there are tradeoffs and so I think what we also need to recognize is how do we align ourselves and this is an incredibly mundane and boring topic but it's real how do we align our people in the field to make sure that we're getting those realities when you think about especially look at the security concerns that we have in a number of embassies around the world well if the only people you can talk to are the people who are willing to or able to walk into your embassy and go through a lot of security and be in the capital and place what you know about the country on you're going to have a skewed vision and obviously there are lots of means of figuring out what's going on all over the world but these are real questions too about how we array our diplomatic resources our development professionals to actually understand what's going on in the world it's not just kind of like you know sorry to say it a financial times poll or commercial research or any of that stuff and so it's a challenge moving forward too because it's very easy in the moments where the ticker on CNN is telling you that such and such is a youth revolution happening wherever that you want to think that's representative and the truth is more times than not it hasn't been to your point about the financial times poll I will say one of the other interesting points is that for all of the opportunity the same number percentage of respondents commented that technology was also seen as driving the increasingly driving the gap between the haves and the have not so an interesting point and Zina was a lot of leadership obviously on the youth councils when I was at U.S.A.D. we worked together to ensure that in the field that we were leveraging the reach of U.S.A.I.D. programming to engage in a broad constituency the broadest constituency is possible before we go down it's just to see if you want to get a chance to comment or Zina if you had any further comment on engaging American young people and how that's happening I would point to three different things that immediately popped to my mind in terms of both the development side engaging with youth and different people and I think that's a number one let's not overlook the p-score a vast majority of whom post college engaged for the first time in development work I think that continues to be a legacy program that is a primary way that many people get their start when it comes to the development overall and if you look at the background of people whether in my office first taste for development and have developed a lifelong passion for it out of that so that's certainly one place that continues to be an important aspect institution to support I think also looking and seeing what we can do to deepen and increase the number of fellowships I know that's a priority for the president, for the secretary certainly for the administrator and there are different ideas underway in terms of how to do that for myself my beneficiary of a fellowship through my university where I was able to go to Africa spend over a year in Rwanda looking and working directly on these issues and I certainly think the benefit of that can't be overstated finally there's a whole series of partnerships with universities that the administrator really has made a focus of our efforts as we move forward one of them is a higher education solutions network which really represents a groundbreaking research partnership with seven different initial chosen universities on a range of issues from food security to conflict across both domestic universities, even international as far away as Macquarie University in Kapala and there I think is another opportunity to open up sort of the theory and the practice of development to a broader range of people but not only the professors and the academics but their students as well and really kind of give them exposure often for the first time on some of the key challenges that we're grappling with I'm going to take a few questions why don't we take three together we have some mics if you raise your hand questions we'll go here in the front Katie do you have a mic up here in the front Hi my name is Jeanine I'm from Boston with Advocates for Youth and thank you Nicole for convening this great panel and thank you all for coming and speaking about your comments on youth and US foreign policy my question is really a lot of times when people talk about youth and US foreign policy the conversation doesn't really stray beyond kind of economic and political participation yet we know that in order to engage in the economy and political process is young people have to be healthy the same time we have a lot of legal and structural barriers that prevent young people especially young women and LGBT youth from accessing health information and services especially around sexual and reproductive health and rights and so I wonder if you could each speak about how your agencies are ensuring that sexual and reproductive health and rights of young people are integrated in the US foreign policy work that you all are doing thank you Thanks we'll take a couple more Hello Hi my name is Cheri Youssef about how your various agencies on the development and the diplomacy side are reconciling these new governments for lack of a better word that we're ushered in or triggered in by youth movements or youth participation that now no longer respect that youth participation and how will you continue to program in youth engagement programming or activities in light of those new government structures We'll take one more Hi first thank you all for speaking Azenan said for all the youth in the room role models are really important and you guys all definitely provided some great examples of that today and this question probably not for everyone in this room but I'm wondering if you guys could speak a little to youth that are coming up with more distrust in the government worried about corruption in Washington we're going to be able to implement all these great ideas and policies that these youth have in the current state of what's going on in Washington Crack out a couple of these and make sure I share the questions equally actually the one seems very generous the one question I wanted to start off with actually is the second question on sort of how do we engage with new governments especially those that are in space even if youth movements initially led to a change overall and my favorite answer to questions like that is to point to a new strategy or policy that we've launched so two days ago we launched a new democracy human rights and governance strategy it does speak very much to how we need to adjust our programming to reflect these critical issues that you're mentioning focuses a lot on accountability citizen accountability participation also looks at integrating democracy human rights and governance programs across our development spectrum and then also has a standalone real focus on the human rights side as well but I think the underlying message behind that strategy was the first in 20 years update on those sets of issues is that there's a growing concern certainly internally when it comes to closing space for civil society worldwide I don't have to point to specific countries I think most of you are aware of different places where this has been an issue and it seems to be somewhat of a ripple effect just as we look at sort of one set of countries then another sort of we'll join that and I think we recognize that we're in a bit of a struggle right now in terms of trying to make sure that these universal rights are things that across the board both in terms of youth access and participation but more broadly for society are things that how can we advance and prevent the roll backs from taking place we don't have I don't think the solution but we are doing everything we can we're committed to it we want to engage in dialogue we want to push the issue especially in those places where we feel it's at risk and as well as those places where there's opportunity and keep the mantle going but you're certainly touching upon an area that we're thinking a lot about and I can also make sure that for those of you who are interested that you're able to access it's a publicly available strategy now and we'll be doing more on it fairly soon so you're not or Andrew I think on that question Steve actually gave you a very good answer I don't have anything to add but I will address the third question which was around kind of corruption in Washington you know and young people's voice and participation and last week I did a small kind of round table with some really successful young entrepreneurs from throughout the U.S. who happened to be in D.C. for a weekend and just wanted to do kind of a you know a think session with them and none of them independently would have thought of engaging the State Department and you know the why in that is that there's not a value proposition for them in that like we don't add value to what they're already doing very effectively around you know internationally and so I think to get to you know why young people care I think young people as I said have a global outlook you know I think young Americans do care about the rest of the world whether they're going to commit time to the peace corps independently through NGOs spend time overseas or see it as you know a community to be connected to their peers and I think we have to make the case for you know the value we add is to facilitate those connections and that those have to be around issue areas you know whether it's around social issues or economic issues but there's a lot of benefit I think in value from those connections and I think that's a role that we can play to connect those but you know I do think that apathy exists but I think you know like any relationship you have to kind of prove your value over to you I'm going to take a very quick crack at all three in in order the first on the health and LGBT question because it's an important one and shouldn't be left out and Steve I'm sure can talk a lot more about this you're probably right that when we get together to talk about these topics we don't talk health as much as we should or could but we do I think actually from the start on the LGBT question make it very clear that part of what we see as young people having the rights they deserve within their societies are political and economic but they're also extremely personal and so those have been important topics for us you saw Secretary Clinton come out while she was still secretary in terms of this being an important international issue and giving pretty much a landmark speech on this trying to kind of establish it as an international norm that people discuss and so that's that's really obviously important to us the health question though is one where actually if you really look dollars wise where we put our money where our mouth is on all these youth issues we probably invested more in health than any of the rest of them and so you're right it probably doesn't get as much talk but it gets actually a lot more action than some of the rest of these so I think that is front and center for us even if it's not always discussed on the new government's point I would direct you I think the USAID strategy that came out really is a landmark effort for the US government and I think grapples with these questions in a much more sort of detailed and sophisticated way than usually the public discourse allows but as Steve mentioned this is a huge issue for us all over the world and I think as we see democratic transitions as we see transitions first of all I think it's important to note that many of these transitions may have been sparked by youth but they weren't fundamentally or exclusively driven by youth when it really came one push came to shove and so I don't know that sadly there has been the kind of tip that people people see but I think you hit on a couple points that are important to us one is and this is a broader point young people have been incredibly great at agitating and incredibly bad at translating that into any sort of positive or not positive but tangible concrete agenda partially because of the organization questions partially because of resource questions and partially because quite frankly a lot of the people who are coming into power have a deeper history of organization than you can have when you're 20 years old but this is a problem too it's not exclusively on the governments and people need to come together and quite frankly we're seeing local politics play out often much more than the struggle between democracy and autocracy there are local dynamics as well but as Steve said this is something that's at the top of our agenda it's something that publicly and privately we're pushing with all governments whether they're new or old that we believe that full democracy is not about simply having people go to the ballot box and drop a ballot in there and leave it's about the rights that come along with it it's about the role that citizens play in society but it's also about the role that non-governmental organizations play when you talk about young people clearly there's stuff the US government does clearly there's stuff that local governments do but this whole civil society space must be vibrant and filled to prepare young people to play those roles to both teach them but allow them to play those roles within society and so I think you've seen certainly from across the US government as those sorts of questions have been under threat in various places around the world both public and private statements and increasingly see from the hill questions of re-examining where money goes and all that sort of stuff so those are very real issues and I think we are very attuned to them. Lastly on the distrust point I think that the reality is and this is a place where American youth are in sort of no different than you name the country. We get jazzed about elections or sometimes we do and then the governing part is kind of icky and confusing and seems weird and so we go back to our lives and whatever we're doing. Obviously there's a lot broken in Washington but there's a lot that's really good. I mean if you look across this panel this administration and I think many others before it value the energy of young people value the talents of young people and put them in positions that actually matter and so I think first of all inside government there are lots of ways in which young people can play a really important part. Outside government there's just as big a role to play and I think you see that even in the kind of dysfunction of Washington when young people decide to come together to lift their voices up about something like sopa and pipa when everyone started freaking out on that I've never seen Congress do anything so quickly ever as they did on that and so there's still a tremendous potential for young people it's just a question of whether you feel passionate about something and you want to speak up on it. I think part of the problem is that there's a little bit of an instant gratification culture which is like if I don't see results in five minutes or tomorrow then it's not really worth the time and I think that's a place where our collective generation probably needs to figure out that stuff takes a while and so there are more than enough avenues to have your voices heard if you can just try and be organized about it and be persistent about it. That's great. Some interesting data we can talk about after we outline some of the mistrust and if we hear around the world from some of your counterparts. We have time for one more round of questions so we'll take three more, not a lot to hand. We'll go in the back. Thank you. Hi my name is Sophie Espersen I work with Activista it's a global youth change maker community. I want to hear your point of views on what issues youth can efficiently create change on. I think you pointed a little bit towards it and what kind of support they need and what kind of support you can help them get both in terms of diplomatic support but also in terms of leadership and safe spaces. Thank you. Thank you very much. This has been wonderful. My name is Rachel Peterson I'm with Americans for Democracy and Human Rights in Bahrain and I would really like to hear all of your opinions on your various organizations can help. Our partner governments, governments that might not be implementing policies that we necessarily agree with and help them to encourage listening to the youth and help them to encourage more youth involvement within their own countries. Thank you. Interest of gender and quality I'm trying to get a question from a guy but alright, we're going to go up there in the back, right there. Hi I'm Carrie Diener from Mercy Corps thanks again for your great presentation today. I had a question around one of the topics raised related to metrics and as an implementing agency this is extremely important for us both in terms of how we think about program design but you know also I think in terms of prioritization and I see that being a huge issue now in the tight fiscal environment here in Washington. On that vein you know I was wondering if you could speak a little bit about what you see as some of the transformative research questions for the field and what you think really could be game changing in terms of metrics and just relate that back to how you would see that playing out in terms of the role of implementers as well, thanks. Great, great questions. Start on any of those? Take those all I guess, why not? First of all in metrics and I think this is where you will probably see the differentiation among our various sort of purchase within the US government of what would get people, first of all what research questions are out there that kind of still need to be answered and second of all what is compelling to US government people to kind of get momentum to move things. First on the research questions obviously there's still so much out there that is vague, that is qualitative in nature. I don't think we have a sense of what interventions actually work in a lot of these places, whether it's you know again I think health might be a little bit more defined slightly more scientific but when it comes to how we prepare young people to play a role in society, how we train them to take jobs, to create jobs, those questions are still very vague and you'd be surprised or not surprised that most of what we get in terms of research on these questions is kind of different angles and a few little sort of creatively selected tidbits of quantitative data and so I think there's still a whole range of questions that need to be answered. I think in terms of the things that we look at and would want to see more information on are really better correlations with things like economic growth and security and again I think as you go down the line you'll hear different answers from where I sit because we have lots of sort of correlations right we hear statistics all the time okay youth bold you know 86% of the countries that have had civil wars or conflict there whatever percent youth I may be getting the statistics wrong that's fine but that doesn't help us very much. That simply reinforces something that we all sort of know what we want to know more about or what are the mechanism what are the causal links there that we can actually focus our attention on mostly because as I said before our resources are finite and I fear that a lot of times the US government kind of throws a lot of resources at a problem and recognizing that we don't have all the resources in the world the more we can target that and say you know what these things don't work as well and as great that someone else do that and we're going to focus here we'd like to be doing that the research would and can help us to target that much more effectively very quickly on the what issues can youth influence I don't think there's a defined set of issues I think you know when you look at everything from nuclear non-proliferation to student loan forgiveness policy the point is if you've got enough people saying something and they've got a coordinated message certainly in a lot of countries you're going to get attention and hopefully some movement on policy there are obviously countries where the correlation between public opinion and government action is not as close as one might want it to be but I'm not sure that maybe you guys have a better answer but I'm not sure that you could say well youth really can move this and not that I think obviously on topics that are close more closely related to youth themselves there's more kind of moral resonance to it right so the right to be heard the right to be educated the right to have a job those are things that youth can speak more authoritatively on than others who sort of study it academically but I don't see there being a limit to the set of substantive issues then lastly on the question of governments who are not necessarily doing what we want I mean this is a very broad question and I'll give you a somewhat broad answer which is yes certainly there are governments around the world that don't uphold the values that we think not only are best for global peace and security but also best for citizens within those countries and I think what we're able to do is certainly say that and I think you've heard in the case of a number of countries us saying how strongly we feel about this I think you've seen in places in the region you work in the support for national dialogue processes and making sure that they're robust national dialogue processes where all voices are heard and that's a place where both locally on the ground through our embassy and privately and it's not necessarily on the front page of the New York Times every day we're working every day to ensure that in places like Bahrain the national dialogue or in Yemen the national dialogue is something that represents youth views as well as all constituencies to have a voice in that I think that in addition to that there are higher profile ways that we do and can get those perspectives out there in the case of again the Middle East when the president came out in May of 2011 and said here are a set of universal principles that will support both in the Middle East and more broadly those are principles we aim to stand by and principles that inform how we spend our resources what sorts of organizations we work with out in the field and also what sorts of governments we will you know work closely with and try to move in the right direction and so you know a number of tools but I think we haven't backed away from the fact that we do aspire to a sort of core set of principles that we're going to continue to do all we can to uphold. So on the transformative research questions I mean I think I agree with Andrew where I don't think that that the leadership on that is not necessarily going to come from the State Department or from our diplomacy point of view in terms of what are the things that are working but that is something that you know we need to work with partners to figure out frankly with USAID as well to see how is to make the case for doing the needle on our broader interests in a country or region and so I think that's a very much ongoing conversation and something you know I think other multilaterals and international organizations are also thinking about and so just kind of looking at the data I think we've done a lot to articulate the problem statement you know just as a community and I think it's been less solutions based and so that's where I'd like us to you know have these conversations is around what is working and around just getting and socializing those best practices and evidence that backs that up I think in terms of issues that youth can create change on I mean I can respond anecdotally to that from the experience that I've had kind of being in the field engaging with young people I think that any issue can you know that youth want to engage on they can but I think that the issues that I've seen kind of rise to the top have been around climate change have been around youth as positive actors for peace building or in you know or as positive actors for conflict resolution and I've actually seen that in a lot of different places young people who are leading efforts against violence against young people and large movements to be able to protect you know frankly children and other vulnerable populations and then you know young people who are extremely committed to democracy building processes within you know their country so I've met few people from South Sudan who are involved in constitution writing similar to Libya they want an active role in you know the way that their country is shaping up which is incredibly exciting but also around like let's say the elections in Kenya you know young people as you know forces for non-violence or socializing good messages so I think those are bigger buckets and those are you know frankly it's not I don't talk to everybody in every country but those are the things that you consistently hear over and over which makes you think that there are certain themes that resonate maybe more with young people and then what we can offer I mean I think obviously you know platforms for exposure safe spaces so a lot of our youth councils are actually private the names of the youth council members are not shared they're safe spaces they're sometimes the only place where we can engage in a dialogue we don't need that dialogue they do and connections to networks and so you know when you're looking at people who are trying to move from protester to you know actively engage political participant you know we've connected them to other people in the United States who have led that sort of change and try to just make those facilitate those networks and those connections I think those are some of the most valuable things that we can frankly give to young people and they are so yeah now I on that first question about issues youth can influence I absolutely agree with what my colleagues have mentioned you know for me the way I look upon it is almost from a thematic perspective so you know thinking about ways that you can affect norms and standards that are existing especially when you have a situation of flux that's rapidly transitioning from a more traditional society to one one that's more grappling with all the issues in the middle so it's everything from you know the safety issue gender issues issues of tolerance issues of diversity issues of human rights more broadly and I think youth can play a critical bridging role I think not only are they less tied to and bound to the existing structures and hierarchies that were formerly in place but I think they have an attitude and an outlook that can be useful to help foster the type of dialogue that we've talked about you know I really feel that it's a cross-cutting thing I don't think there's any one particular issue more than others that youth are in a good role to play I think I would look at it more thematically and say how do we can youth affect and influence is changing norms and standards and then you know from an agency perspective you know it's obviously first and foremost the locus of action is with youth themselves but you know I think we can do a lot in terms of the capacity building side the exchange side you know I think oftentimes you this is maybe their first or second time they've ever tried to organize maybe they're having difficulty engaging in a national dialogue maybe they have a network that needs expanding and they're struggling to connect to those who can actually help them implement an ambitious agenda maybe they're suffering from a frustration of impatience and you know need a larger group to brainstorm different solutions in terms of moving the agenda forward I think these are all things that you know we can either connect you to other groups that have been effective in terms of undertaking those types of things it's something where trainings dialogue talking as well these are all different ways that I think we've successfully been able to engage there on the issue with more difficult governments I would reiterate what Andrew mentioned you know often in different places where we work we don't see eye to eye with the governments that are there you know one way that we've traditionally tried to deal with this issue from the development standpoint is that we don't always work with the governments we work with a broad array of civil society and non-profit actors you know we are certainly aren't exclusive in terms of those types of relationships and I think as we struggle with this question in certain places that's the natural fallback for us to make sure that when it says when we engage in a country it doesn't be engaging just with the government itself it does be engaging with a wider array and those that we believe we share more common values when it comes to some of these difficult issues and then finally on the metrics and research questions again I would agree with what Zenon and Andrew said there's a ton that we don't know certainly even when we were dealing with a policy part of the rationale for getting it out is that we need to begin to establish baselines, metrics data indicators so that you know as the next time we go around and launch a policy we'll have much clearer quantitative answers to key questions that we're trying to figure out you know I would say in terms of where I think some of the gaps are you know I think there's a greater amount of data in understanding when it comes to some of the earlier sort of nutrition health related indicators I think as you get to bigger questions in terms of economic productivity and the types of activities that lead to particular impacts that's where it really breaks down I don't think the data has been collected in a systematic way so far and so even as we talk about things like youth employment programs, vocational training I think we're still in a mode right now where testing and trying out things oftentimes anecdotally I would also point to the peace and security side as well obviously a huge issue whether it's looking at the child soldier issue on one end of the spectrum or broader recruitment of children in other conflicts again there's a ton that we don't know but as you know we try to think through the stabilization peace and security aspect to our work we absolutely need to get better data and to think through more consistently the types of programs that can help us achieve those goals so I would point to those as a few but there's many more as well out there it's a nascent field and it's hard to learn at this point with that we'll let that be the last word and be respectful of everyone's time and just again say thank you I think it's clear that with the leadership at this table and in the audience with all of you that together we can continue to advance this agenda which is still still young and growing but no less critically important so thank you all for being here today and hopefully we will see you again in space on dialoguing on these issues so thank you all very very much