 We're here at Beyond 2015, the Global Youth Summit, taking place in Costa Rica and I'm very pleased to be joined by Zinat Rahman, who is the Special Advisor to the Secretary of States for Global Youth Issues for the United States. Zina, thank you very much indeed for being with us today. Thank you very much for having me. And now let's start off by asking you about the Office of Global Youth Issues. What exactly does the office do? So let me start by painting the picture a little of the world that we live in, which is a world in which we have the largest population of young people that has ever existed, the largest generation. We have people like President Obama who recently made a trip to sub-Saharan Africa and made youth one of the key strategic components of his trip. My boss, Secretary of State Kerry, has often talked about the importance of engaging young people in global debates. And then, as you and I sit here, we sit here with leaders in the UN who are here at the Global Youth Summit to hear about the solutions that young people are driving in the space for social good. And so I think this is a moment not like any other in history, and really the U.S. government has a realization that we would like to build relationships with this next generation of leaders. And what are you hoping to gain by your participation here? Well, I'm lucky that we came with, I'm leading a delegation of eight American social entrepreneurs who are focused in the space of education and a bunch of different things, teaching coding skills, things like that. And I really hope that, you know, I think the most important parts of my job include a platform. So creating a platform for young people, for good ideas to be heard, for role models to be seen, the network, which is so important in any conference, but certainly here too, that we're able to connect young people to one another. And then the connection to skills. And, you know, really looking at those interventions at work to help people succeed as they're looking to do social good projects around the world. And so I've already felt that I've already made personally great connections here, but I think the outcome of this conference will be that there will be ripple effects of people who are connecting around different areas of interest. I was going to say, because a lot of the time the summits come under criticism that there are places here where dialogue takes place, but not a lot of action. But it seems here that the energy certainly is going to be creating something a little bit different for the outcomes and for the future. Yeah. I mean, this conference is bound to be different by the fact that it's more young people than talking heads like us. And the fact that, you know, people like us are asking for the recommendations that are coming from, you know, what young people are thinking and seeing and what they need to tackle some of the largest global challenges, which are not youth issues. They're just global issues. And if we're all looking at them together, you know, young people need to have a voice at that table. And we hope there are participation that we can help make that happen. There's been a lot of gloom and doom, a lot of pessimism certainly in terms of the press and in terms of media coverage of young people. And the figure seems to bear out in a number of countries where young people are making up a tremendous amount of the global, the population of unemployed. I wanted to find out from you, are you optimistic for the future? What's your feeling about the future for global youth? Look, I am optimistic. You know, I think change is hard and it takes a long time. And nobody can expect it to happen very quickly. But when we look at even a government like mine five years ago, it wouldn't have had this position. And the fact that we are looking at how we can innovate around our diplomacy, other countries are doing the same thing because I think we all have a realization that, you know, we don't want to wait 10 or 20 years down the road. We really want to unleash that talent that exists. And remember what I said, the largest generation of young people that has ever existed right now. And so we all have to be committed to those innovations, whether it's around entrepreneurship, the knowledge economy, skill building, but we can't keep doing the usual things. We need to change it up. And I think that's what this represents, but that's what all my engagements with young people around the world represent. So I think we have a moment in time that we have to make the right decision to really support the interests of young people because it's in the best interest of all of us. Thank you very much for being here today. Thank you very much.