 Welcome to this press conference from the 49th annual meeting of the World Economic Forum here in Davos. Thank you for being here in the room. Thank you for being on the live stream whether you're watching on Twitter, Facebook or on our website. We're happy you're tuning in. This press conference is dedicated to the launch of the Global Youth Alliance. You've seen that six of our seven coaches here at this meeting are under the age of 30. So a very timely launch here today. We're very excited that the panelists have chosen the forum platform to do this. Let me introduce our wonderful panel. To you, ladies and gentlemen, to my immediate left, I'm joined by Laurent Frex, the executive vice president and CEO for the Americas of Nestlé. Of course, a Swiss company as I might point out as a Swiss organization. Right at the heart and center of our panel today, we're joined by Patrick Dot, the president for Global Market of Nielsen and last but definitely not least, we're joined by Nicola Mandelson, the vice president for Europe, Middle East and Africa of Facebook. Thank you for being here. Laurent, let's kick this off with you. We're launching this Global Youth Alliance. Let's start with the basics. What is this alliance? What is it trying to achieve? Yeah, thank you for the question. Let me put it in the context of one of the great issues of the current times that we got more than 70 million of youngsters without a job, many without jobs or we are not in education. We got the issue of informality, which is massive in emerging markets, very high unemployment rates in developed countries. So this is a real issue, the issue of the integration of the use to the labor market and to society. The most direct contribution of business to society is through providing jobs. So facing this problem, we got together 20 companies, global coming from different industries, from the new technologies, from the communication industry, from the services, from the industry itself. With the same vision that we cannot stand still, we cannot watch what's happening, we have to be part of the solution. 90% of the jobs provided will be coming from the private sector and we can as well contribute to the education. So the 20 companies are huge. I think it's not bad to mention them because they again are really relevant. We got ABB from Switzerland, we got Adeco, another Swiss company, we got BBVA, the Spanish Bank, Global Operations, we got Cargill, we got CEMEX, we got NG, we got EY, we got Facebook, and very happy to have Facebook on board, we got Feminich, we got Mercer, MasterCard, Microsoft, Nestle, of course, Nielsen, and very happy to have Nielsen on board, Publicis, Rockwell Automation, SAP, Starbucks, Vodafone, and Whitencase, the law firm. And on top, we got a partnership with the World Bank, which is also very dedicated to the matter. Collectively, we employ 1.5 million people and we would like to focus on three critical areas where we believe that together we can make a difference. And one, number one is to provide the use with the skills that will be necessary in the 21st century and everyone agrees that those are new skills linked to the technological revolution. We know that 60% of the jobs that will be provided to the youngsters entering, to the children entering, to the education system do not exist yet. And that's of course related to the technological revolution. And we believe that collectively, especially with the partners that we got, we can make an impact and we can equip the next generation with the skills that they need. So that's number one. The second one is that we really believe in the power of the dual education system, the one that combines the theory with the practice. There is no better way to learn than to learn the theory but also to learn the practice. That's the Swiss model, that's the German model. And we believe that it has global relevance and by pushing those education system that are so powerful, that are so cost efficient, we can also contribute to make a difference. And of course, those models involve the private sector and we are all committed to contributing this respect. And last but not least, we will also support young entrepreneurs because we believe that this is a great source of employment and we believe that there also we can play the role of business angels and support them and provide them the framework and the support that they need. And collectively, because it's good to have ambitions and it's important to mark those ambitions, our ambition collectively is to impact more than six million young people across the globe by 2022. So that's the first milestone that we set to ourselves. We are large companies and we believe that we can make that kind of impact. Thank you, Laurent. And I'm glad you mentioned also that dual education is a German model otherwise if you had said just a Swiss model I would have to correct you as a German here on the panel. But let me, before I come to our next speaker, let me quickly ask you, you mentioned informality as an important point here. Can you explain, especially to our online audience, what does that mean and what's the challenge here? Basically, informality is a youngster with a job but without a contract being eventually paid on a cash basis but having no protection, having no possibility to project into the future. Typically, those jobs would be little jobs selling in the streets or whatever but they could be also less recommendable jobs. And that's a real issue because the youngsters that are in informality typically do not have bank accounts, they don't pay taxes, they don't really contribute to society, they cannot really invest also in their own development. So the big issue is that this is the majority of the jobs in many countries across the world and clearly in Latin this is the dominating model. So providing formal jobs helps youngsters integrate themselves into society. Thank you, Laurent. I think it's crucial to understand the magnitude of the challenge and also have these concrete examples. So thank you for elaborating on that. Pat, in order to get these six million young people into jobs, it helps to understand what they aspire to and what they want to achieve. You're well placed to have these insights. Share with us how are you going about this and what can you tell us? Great, thank you very much. It's been a real honor to be part of the Alliance for Youth since its inception, Nielsen was there when it started in Europe and moved to the Americas and we're getting a lot of benefits from it and one of the things we like to give back is insight into young people's habits and what they're looking for. So we have conducted a survey of young people across the globe. It's fresh information. We went out to 27 different countries around the world and asked young people, what are they looking for from the future and particularly as it relates to employment. And what was one of the interesting findings, it may not be shocking, but 55% of them which was one of the strongest statistics came back, they just want to raise a family and take care of their family. That's one of their ambitions and aspirations in life, not a lot different to the rest of many of us here. The second one was really interesting about wanting to be doing great work and meaningful work and being appreciated for it. That was 32% of the young population was looking for that. So those were two of the big ones. What was also interesting is where they're looking for work and this goes back to some of the pillars that Loran was talking about, particularly around entrepreneurship because 35% of them are looking to run their own company one day and thinking about getting those skills and what skills they need in general management to really look through how they run their own company properly and professionally. And 32% of them want to work for a public or private company and work for a corporation as well. So those are just a few of the statistics in terms of where they want to go. They also wanted to give all of us a bit of a hint what they're looking for and they wanted decent pay but they want all of us to think about flexible working hours a little bit differently into the future even more different than what we're looking at today in terms of just being able to be flexible as well. And all, it was an amazing, the majority of them responded that companies have a huge role to play here. And obviously all of us associate with Alliance for Youth all believe that as well. So those were just some of the insights that the young people gave us and I think that helps make sure we're on the right course with the program that Loran talked about. Thank you Pat. Nicola, when my bosses are not watching, I spend a lot of time on your platforms and I like to think that this is creating work that then others can get meaningful employment from but I know in all seriousness, your industry and the private sector in general has a much bigger role to play here. Maybe you can share with us what your perspective on this is and why you're joining this Youth Alliance. First off, thank you for spending the time that you do on Facebook, much appreciated. We also have been founding partners of the Alliance and very proud partners as well from day one. I think one of the things that's incredibly important is to make sure that we're future-proofing education and I think there is a very important role for business to play in that, especially tech businesses. So one of the things that we've done is actually to create a digital literacy library and it's there for educators around the world to be able to go to. So when that they're looking to upscale the people in the classrooms, they're all the resources there that they can actually find. But if young people are also looking to develop their own skills or further their skills, we run a program called Community Boost and we've made a commitment here that we will upscale over a million people across Europe in the next few years. So that's a very practical, very hands-on approach that we're taking. We're also offering, because I think what's very important when we think about what the jobs of the future are going to be and so many people being born today that we can't even imagine what the jobs are going to be in the future. But we do know that softer skills, creativity, innovation, problem solving, those things matter. And so one of the things that we've created is the Year of Engineering, which is very much about mentoring, where you can actually pass on some of those softer skills. And from a Facebook perspective, when we're actually looking to hire people, actually we recruit for skills, not for experience. Because again, so many of the jobs that we have within our own organization will not exist today, but will in the future. And if even I think of myself, and I know I look terribly old, but my job didn't exist a decade ago, so I couldn't have imagined having this job. And so I can understand and empathize a little bit with young people as to how you think about going forward for your careers. So I think there's a huge opportunity. And I think I also want to pick up on the point that Pat made from the survey that 35% of young people think they'll have their own business, which is great. And we're already seeing that, because what we've seen with the tech revolution is that we've taken away so many of the barriers that existed in the past about how you would actually set up a business. And there's a wonderful story of a guy called Ben Francis. It's a UK story from, he lives in Birmingham, which when he was a teenager, he thought, you know, I kind of don't see the sports clothes out there that are right for me. So he created his own company called Gymshark. And then just six years, he now employs 200 people. So he's developed the business online, he communicates online, he sells online, and you start to see businesses like this. So this gives us great hope in terms of seeing the roles that business can play and also reflecting what young people today are actually asking for. Thank you very much. Now, none of you is from the public sector, but nonetheless, I'll put the question to you. What can the public sector do to help? Yeah, the public sector, of course, has a big role to play in framing the right context, supporting those educational system, especially the dual system, which requires the public sector to get involved and to make it possible. Depending on the country's education is a national matter, but it can be also regional, local matter. So it's important that they get involved and again, create the framework and the right incentives. But at the end of the day, the jobs will be provided by the private sector. So it's real. When we talk about public-private partnership, this is certainly one of the areas which is the most obvious, where combined, we can make the difference. Thank you. Do you want to add to that? The thing that I would add, and it goes both ways, both from the public sector but also from the young people themselves, I think we all need to be listening more because they're pretty vocal out there. If you look online and if you see in the world what people are doing that, the young people are out there and they're expressing their views and they're telling their stories about the things that matter to them. But I think they're often doing that more with, if you like, socialists. If you think about things like the Women's March, if you think about things like the work that's being done to help refugees, you're often seeing young people out there coming together online but then actually coming together in the real world. So actually, I would say I'd be encouraging young people to speak out more because so many of the conversations about your future are being discussed by people who are not quite as young and therefore we need your voices in the conversations and I think that's where the public sector can certainly be helping more in that respect. The only thing I would add is I do believe it's the education system where they can help the most in shaping that and transforming it as quick as possible at all stages of education because I think there's a real hands-on approach that needs to be taken for the youngsters of today to be able to make a huge impact in the future. Thank you. Laurent, you mentioned the six million as a commitment. How optimistic are you about the timeline? What are your expectations? I'm very optimistic for a couple of reasons first because the combined commitments and the joint commitments goes beyond the six million, that's number one. And number two, we have clear indications that many global companies would like to join the movement. So I'm sure that the six million will be overtaken and maybe we will have one year advance ahead of the ambition. So it's a strong conviction that will get there and the impact will be even greater than that. Thank you very much. I might ask you how far you've advanced when you're back next year in Davos. So I've been... Count on it. You have to do the job. We have some time for Q&A. Is there a question here? I think that we have a lady in the first row. The microphone is on its way. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Julie Zhou from iphone.com of China. May I ask some questions down on the earth? If a young person want to apply, like want to join that movement, how will they expect? And the other thing is for the... I don't know if you include the UK, the young people in the UK. Considering the Brexit ahead, if the no deal happens, actually before that, a lot of young people that they don't want to leave EU because they thought if they stay in EU, they enjoy more opportunities. So they have a lot of activities and protests in front of the House parliament. And I think if your alliance can help the people in the UK and also to keep the connection from the people, the young people in the UK and the EU, probably it will be helpful for these two, the two lands, the island and the mainland, still keep somehow the connection. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Maybe I can take the first one and Nicola, I should be the expert on the second one. Thanks, Lorne. I thought I was going to get away with one panel today without talking about Brexit. So on the first one, of course, and it will relate also a lot to Nicola's contribution, to one of the main contribution to the alliance. We will have an all for use, that's the name, all for use platform and we will certainly leverage Facebook for that and the youngsters will be able to engage with us through that platform, but also through events and direct contact opportunities. We don't want it to be only virtual, but of course, we know the power of the platform. And our ambition is really to have a global reach and it's clear that using the technological platforms is a big plus and is the most. Now on the second one. Thanks, Lorne. So first I would say that young people can get engaged already today through the Facebook page all for youth and over the week here in Davos, we've had business leaders that have been part of the alliance actually sharing best practices and also sharing the information about what their commitments have actually been as part of the alliance as well. So that's all on there, the videos are all on there and people can certainly get ahead and to watch that. One of the commitments that Facebook made is about our hiring, especially in the UK and we've made a commitment to hire 600 jobs, especially for young people and entry level people coming in across both business and on the engineering side. And given that nobody quite knows what's going to happen with Brexit at the moment, I don't think anybody is informed enough to be able to say, but what I do see is that young people are already connected, whether they're in the UK or beyond, because that's the nature of the platform that we have. It used to be that it was six degrees of separation, now it's much more like three and a half degrees. So the young people are coming together and I think the examples that I shared around things like the Women's March and the work being done on refugees and so many other passion projects, the young people are coming together anyway. If I could just add one thing on the same question. The alliance for youth, the whole branding around it has been very helpful to the Nielsen company because we do hire from various colleges, from high schools for internships and we are using the alliance for youth, be it that we're sitting in Chennai or we're sitting in Sao Paulo or we're sitting in Jakarta and imagine if all the 20 companies start using that platform as a way to communicate with young people, I think it's just gonna help bring more businesses in because they're gonna see the benefit and we'll use this as a competitive advantage as we think about the young talent we wanna bring into our companies. Lovely. I think one very practical question, where would people go to learn more about the Global Youth Initiative? Are you just giving me another plug for the Facebook page? Okay, all for youth. That's the page, all for youth. That's it. Well, thank you very much. We've come to the end of this press conference. Thank you very much to my panelists for being here and thank you all for watching. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thanks for the great, thank you. We'll be there next.