 Let's try that again. Good morning, everyone. I'm still so happy to see you all here. My name is Nicole Golden. I am the director of the Youth Prosperity and Security Initiative here at CSIS, which we launched a few months ago in partnership with the International Youth Foundation. So very pleased to see so many friends and colleagues and new faces here with us this morning for a very important, timely, and exciting conversation. Young people are transforming our world here and now. Words from the UN Secretary General not too long ago. And I think they are really apt and are significant and signal and representative of the kind of change that we're seeing in a lot of the rhetoric and discussion around young people, not only as the next generation, but as the generation here and now. And who can argue when, depending on who you ask, anywhere from 1.2 to 1.8 billion young people, youth, are here on the planet today. So it's a big number, and it's an exciting population. In his second term five year agenda, the Secretary General put working with and for women and young people front and center on his agenda. It's one of his top five priorities. And a concrete and very significant action against that commitment was to appoint first ever special envoy on youth, Ahmed Al-Andawi. So we are thrilled to have him with us today to talk about his agenda and moving forward what we can expect to see foreign with young people at the United Nations. He has been an advocate, a champion, committed policy and practitioner on youth issues for many years now. He has most recently been working with the League of Arab States and the Arab League and previously worked with UNFPA and Save the Children. He is committed to and passionate about participation, setting up NGOs for young people's participation not only in his home country of Jordan, but setting up the International Youth Council in New York. So without further ado, Ahmed, welcome. We're so happy you're here. Thank you. Good morning. Thank you very much, Nicole. And it's a great pleasure to be with you today. My first visit to Washington DC, the last time I was here it was election night of President Obama for the first time 2008. So it's good to be back and to share with you some updates from the United Nations and about the agenda of youth in the United Nations. Thank you very much for your interest in the United Nations and the work of the United Nations in youth. As kindly mentioned, it's an exciting time to work in youth issues and in development in general. We're talking about maybe 980 days left to the MDGs and a lot of discussion about the post-MDGs and we're talking about the second term of the Mr. Bankimoun as the SG of the United Nations and in his second term, he and the Secretary of the United Nations announced three initiatives, part of his commitment to work with and for young people. One of these initiatives is called the UNV Youth Modality, you know, the United Nations Volunteer Program. With that there's a youth modality now being discussed and hopefully it will be launched soon. The second is a system-wide action plan that I will come to discuss later and the third appointing an envoy in youth issues. And let me start by demystifying the word envoy. I come from Jordan and the Arabic culture, the word envoy means literally a messenger, to be a messenger, which is great, but I mean a messenger is somebody who takes a message from two, right? There are two ends and there's a message. So there's a message and there's a sender and there are a receiver. What is the message should be the message of the United Nations, the UN work in youth. And who is the sender, supposedly the United Nations system and the receiver, young people. They are either 1.2 if you start measuring with 15 years old, 1.8 if you start with 10 years old. Well, with that scene, I'm trying to describe my role for you and try to bring you closer to understand how this position and an envoy in youth in the United Nations work. Usually an envoy in the United Nations as this position is created for conflict zones and areas. And some people think that there's an envoy for youth because youth might be a source of crisis now for some and bringing conflicts and address in some places. I believe it's a great opportunity and this is the thinking that's driving the United Nations. That's a great opportunity to invest in young people today. Go back to this messenger concept, to bring that message and the work of the United Nations closer to young people. First, we need to know what is the work of the United Nations to young people. A piece of information providing what the UN at large is doing for young people does not exist easily because the UN machinery is a huge. So many funds, programs, initiatives at the national, regional and global level and sometimes it's very difficult to make this work accessible to young people, to bring all this work together in one place and try to bring an easy message for young people to understand the work of the United Nations for young people. So it's exactly that. I'm starting my work with making sure that we are re-backaging the work of the United Nations and make it easier to follow. Accessible and like the word readable even. So to put the message and the work of the United Nations in an easier way for young people. But it's not one-way communication, not a BR guy who just tried to promote the work of the United Nations to young people, although that's important, but I'm trying to encourage two ways communication. From young people to the organization by bringing their voices back. But we just have a quick review and overview about how the world looks today for young people. And I think it's, for many of you who are already experienced in that, just talking about 1.2 or 1.8 billion young people living in our planet today, the largest ever youth population in the history of this planet. A planet that is suffering a lot today and that is not sustainable as we are consuming today and as we work today. And those who will suffer most are young people if we don't take actions today. This number is going to be even the next 20 years. Talking about just unemployment and imagine that just last year, 74 million young people in the planet were not employed with no job opportunities, no access to education or training. It's not only 74 million that they do not have any opportunity now in terms of education or job opportunities. But it's more about some structural issues and problems in the labor market that there are so many issues currently even with the employed youth. And I was asking colleagues in the ILO if you want to fix that, how many years we want? Just to fix how things look like today and to find job opportunities for these 74 million. We need 10, 15 years. Well, the good or bad news is in the next 15 years another 425 million jobs need to be created. So there's no time or we don't have the luxury to wait. And this is a pressing issue for all of us. And I think this puts a huge challenge that we are discussing the post-2015 development agenda. But it's not only about employment, it's also about participation. Because if we talk about education as a foundation and providing better education for young people, education that provide the marketable skills and capabilities for lifelong learning, we are talking about what education will result to because education is not about young people demanding a transition to better job opportunities. What I understand very well, I have been spent 18 years in Tahrir Sikwer. I was living in Egypt during the revolution. I understand very well that education will lead to political maturity as well. And people start demanding participation. They demand the institution to be more open for their participation. Go back to Egypt and Tahrir Sikwer. I joined a launching event for the National Youth Survey in Egypt back December 2010, just two months before the revolution. And one of the findings of the National Youth Survey in Egypt was that only 4% of Egyptian youth participate in any voluntary work, only 4%. The number for young female Egyptians is 2%. And that was, I still remember the minister at that time who presented the numbers. She referred this number because young people are lazy. They are careless, they don't want to participate. It was just two months after that date where young Egyptians responded actually in the street with hundreds of thousands protesting. I think sometimes policy makers, they fail to read numbers and they fail to analyze them. That was a sign of protest, not a sign of carelessness. Just two months later, we have seen what happened at Tahrir Sikwer and that was the respondent. That was the right number for me. This is when policy makers and institutions fail to listen to young people. Talking about the youth polish now, especially in the global south, the institutions needs to be more accommodating for young people demands for participation. Not only job opportunities, this goes hand by hand. And that's a big lessons learned from what happened at Tahrir Sikwer. With all that, I think there are great pressure not only in the United Nations, but in everyone to respond to these challenges and to this opportunity. Everybody's just talking about youth as a challenge and sometimes I even, I don't like that much talking about youth issues because you do, I mean, you propose the same issue. I mean, it's in a way of, or talking about youth as beneficiaries only, or talking about youth as problems, or as threats, as, it could be indeed. I mean, if you don't invest in this, a huge number of young people. But what we learned from the Asian Tigers as well, that in some studies, to refer 50% of the transformation that have in these countries, they refer to the fact that they enjoyed a youth culture, a youthful community, with the right policies and investments they were able to transform their countries. So we tend sometimes to forget that this is a great opportunity. It's only if we miss to invest in these opportunities can be a shit and this is what I believe that everybody's trying to respond to that and the United Nations indeed is leading a new momentum for youth development. Starting with that, as I mentioned, the second term action, five year action agenda, that includes working with and for young people. To mention, I mean, what does that mean, the work of the United Nations? As I said, it's again about having three initiatives. The second one that I mentioned briefly is something called Systemwide Action Plan and Youth. Call it in the United Nations because they like acronyms indeed, so swab in youth. So the swab in youth, what does it mean for that? Imagine an organization like the United Nations doing great work at the different agencies and all levels for young people. Imagine a few really united forces and joint forces in this organization and you target youth issues holistically and collectively. I think this is part of, was strengthening the soft power of the United Nations and to test models and provide a more progressive and traditions for youth development and will allow us to do this shift that we are talking about, moving youth from being problems to becoming opportunities. The Systemwide Action Plan is simply a new, a reason why I'm super excited about it, that for the first time ever in the history of the United Nations, we are having an instrument for coordination in youth issues. So this is an action plan bringing all you and agencies together and work plan to address youth issues. And I think this is a great, this will help me a lot as the Secretary General of the United Nations describe my role as a harmonizer. Of course it's an easy role in the United Nations to act as harmonizer, kidding. But when you come to the United Nations to act as a harmonizer and at the same time you come with a Systemwide Action Plan, I feel my mandate has been given an instrument to make the harmonization more systematic, not seasonal, and to bring everybody on board. And I was positively surprised, I was joining the United Nations and everybody told me it's a big system, it's intimidating, just like it's threatening, nobody will cooperate. And just let me share this with you. I'm really positively surprised by the response from all the head of agencies who supported my mission the first two months. And we have bought in a work plan and some agencies have even, I mean, send people to work with me and they are all open and they are clear understanding in the UN system now that we need to work together. My office and my role is not about implementing projects and programs. It's about having somebody has a helicopter view about the work of the United Nations and youth issues. Somebody who can't connect the dots, I can't tell the story in an easier way for me. All our partners, the youth and everyone. And this is exactly my focus. So we are coming with a system-wide action plan that should allow for a more systematic coordination between the UN agencies. And personally, I've built in the first month my work plan, which I call it actually, demystifying again, what does it mean here. And I've bought it based on four key principles that I believe they are the most relevant at the moment to support your development. Starting with participation. And by participation I mean allowing for more access to the United Nations. Allowing young people to access the organization and to interact with the organization. We are talking about a game, 1.2 billion young person, and having one envoy to represent their voices because sometimes I like to describe my role, not only that you are an envoy for youth, but the youth involved for the United Nations. But this will be a bit misleading if I say that I can't carry the voices of 1.2 billion. I believe in mechanism. I'm personally obsessed in mechanisms because I believe if you want really to bring people on board, you should create meaningful mechanism for that. So it's not the job of one person or one entity, it's more about creating meaningful mechanisms for them. Starting from the national level without having advisory boards for the UN country teams, to what we are discussing now, establishing a regional economic and social youth forum at the regional level, and having a global eco-soc economic and social youth forum to have young people discussing the issues being debated at the economic and social council. Soon there's another exciting announcement the United Nations will announce the United Nations Panel on Youth, group of different, I mean, covering different sectors and from private sector to media, academia, youth organization to not only advise the UN, but also to enlarge the network of advocates for young people. This lead me to the second part of my work plan, the second principle, which is advocacy. With advocacy, we're talking about the BOS 2015 Development Agenda, and do you know that youth were there in the whole process so far in the inputs of the consultation? If you go to My World 2015, you will find the majority of respondents are young people. My role here, just to make sure that youth are not only in the inputs of this consultation, but they are prioritizing the output and the final product as well. And make sure the BOS 2015 prioritizing youth issues, I'm sure we'll have more discussion on that. The third principle is partnership. For me, go back just to the unemployment situation. Do you think governments alone can solve it? Or private sector alone or civil society? It's only by creating multi-stakeholder partnerships and youth development that we can respond to and to address whether the challenges or to capitalize all the assets we have. And the fourth is to do all that again, we'll go back to the fact that we need more harmonization for the work of the United Nations. I like the term harmonization. I know any Chinese here? The term harmonization is very deep rooted in the Chinese culture. And I believe it's time to have a better harmonization between the UN agencies. And the great thing that we are getting an excellent response from all UN agencies to support this joint exercise of making the work of the UN more accessible to everyone, partners and youth. These are some of the updates, developments with the UN working youth. I'm sure there are other questions and I look forward to your questions. I left some of the things maybe for more interactive dialogue, but I just wanted to start with this. Allow you know more about what we are discussing now in the United Nations. And again, it's so great to be with you here in DC and I look forward to your questions. Thank you. Any youth organization and youth activists, it's like a second birth certificate because you are being recognized for your presence and existence and contribution. And I think that's what I have mainly was focusing by providing is to provide an opportunity where you recognize and celebrate the success of young entrepreneurs who contributed to their community. I think this is extremely important. As we talk about enabling environment for youth development, the issue of recognition remain very important. And then it gives you an opportunity, of course to learn and interact with other youth young entrepreneurs from different parts of the world, from private sector to participation, to working in sexual and reproductive health and very different issues. So I think that's what I enjoy the most is the issue of meeting others and it gave me more visibility for my work at that time back in 2008. I believe it's very important. We are developing a kind of models for what a youth enabling environment can be. And for me, it's indeed one of the main elements and core elements of that is to inspire others by showing that you can do it. Because what an entrepreneur is is not a person who just wait others to act, right? The entrepreneur at the end of the day was somebody who understand very well that well, the laws might not be very friendly for youth and there are funding issues, difficulties, there are problems, there are lack of support, lack of interest sometimes. And despite of all that, get things done. This is the entrepreneur. Otherwise, I mean, there will be somebody waiting others to act and really act to their actions. But the entrepreneur for me is somebody who realize and despite all the challenges and issues, still can do something and contribute and look to the assets we have. And to me, I'm carrying this with me to the United Nations of it now because when I develop my work plan, you can start putting a very ambitious work plan that asking others, right? Because we tend to ask, you should contribute that, you should do this and you should put $2 million here. I think with that, people will panic if you start telling them, okay, you should bring that. My approach was different. I took my time to study the UN very well and to meet with everyone, to listen, to join all agencies, the planning of my work plan. I just was focusing the first year on a re-backaging thing and to look what we have, not what we need and to start getting things done based on what we have. And I think that was a very good shift in the way we think because if we start putting the wish list for what you want, it will never end, but was mainly focused in the assets we have. And it's amazing when you see an organization like the United Nations, what have, sometimes you just require again connecting things and re-backaging them and it's amazing what the result will be. It's amazing, you talk about how you took your time and you definitely maximized the 24 hours of the day because you, astonishingly, were able to get through a system, a work plan within really no time and that buy-in, talk about that first month and how you managed to pull this together and what you say was took your time but really did it at a record pace. I think it's just something interesting to share because we all sometimes have this kind of tough deadlines. In my first meeting with Sir Vankin when he told me, okay, I want a work plan in the first month. I mean, you have one month to give me a work plan. Looking to me, I still don't have a staff, I still have where they could have an office and then I have this schedule of meetings, sometimes having 10 to 12 meetings every day. That's all my personal records, to be honest, in the first month. I was leaving two, sometimes three hours or four hours a day and then running two meetings and staying very late to the office and trying to digest and reflect the both things and I was writing, I mean, my contribution or reflect hugely very early in the morning at 4 a.m. And at the end, we hosted five planning meetings. I invited all our colleagues in the UN agency. I shared it with the entire agency network and I was very, even I tweeted for ideas from young people and I wanted to make sure that everybody gave you an ownership to this post and that this, I mean, kind of collecting and trying to really reflect the whole spirit of bringing all the UN together and put it in a one-work plan. So I was happy that we managed to put something that I'm personally satisfied about and the SG has fully endorsed Sir Banking when his speech at the EcosurQ forum, he asked all international leaders and the senior officials of the United Nations to support the work plan and get it done and one month was challenging. But now when I look at it, I think I'm not planning to add anything soon. I think just to put this ambitious yet realistic work plan just on a track and I think it was a very interesting experience. But just so I think, again, I think that my experience in the Arab League and seeing how intergovernmental organization functions internally helped me a lot to navigate in the UN. Of course, that's a way bigger organization but it's the same mindset, how you will navigate with that and how you make sure that you bring everybody on board because this is the only guarantee and making sure that things will be implemented in the future. I would be amazed that you actually found your way around the buildings in a pretty good fashion. I think that would have been number one on my work plan if I got through that within the first month. I think I would have been pretty proud of myself so it's impressive. So obviously you're somebody that doesn't, we've learned doesn't require much sleep to be incredibly productive and effective but is there anything else? Is there any one thing that we should know about you that we haven't seen in a bio or heard you talk about yet today as you go forward in this role? Maybe something we shared yesterday with the students at George Washington University because some people asked me how you get this and it just survived because I never, I mean, I was not a given youth work by opportunities. I was always given by my passion and by cause always. And some things, and this has become a message for me to everyone because I think when you are given by your passion, by your cause, life would be way more rewarding than you becoming very opportunistic in the way you think. I think some dedication and some passion will be maybe, when I look back to some of the things I have done, I have done, I mean, not very wise decisions regarding my career at some point but I realized later that they were very wise at the long term if you follow your passion and just to remember that we only live once so we're better for our passion in this. And this is something I keep reminding myself every day that I would not have been here if I was not given enough dedication to the youth issue. I'm sure many, many of our colleagues here understanding very well and joining me in this. Yeah, that's very exciting. So we'll just wanna follow up on a few points that you mentioned and then we'll turn it over to our audiences. So your work plan for keywords, participation, advocacy, harmonization and partnership. And when talking about, I really like how you reflected on your role as an envoy, as a messenger and how you're realistic about the fact that you can't realistically represent the voices of 1.2 or 1.8 billion young people. I like to say I was looking at the top 10 Twitter follower people and so the top 10 all together including Justin Bieber, Lady Gaga, President Obama, if you look at the top 10 all together their followers are about a quarter, a little more than a quarter of a million. So when you think about representing those voices, can you talk a little bit more? You started to about how you think about that scale and how you think about not only representing those people but getting that message out and how you're leveraging platforms that already exist and where technology comes in and just how you're thinking about that platform. If we think it globally, I think this would be a bit challenging to bring everybody here. But I believe in the subsidiary to principle and youth work. Meaning that I mean what can be and what should be done at the national level, at the local level even, needs to be dealt with at the national level. And not everything needs to be regional, everything has to be global. But we need to make sure that we are working at the national level. Luckily the UN does not lack mechanisms at the national level. I have enough offices and organization dealing with young people at the national level. So I think the whole spirit of communicating and bringing the UN closer to young people, this should start at the national level. That's a very important bloc of our work. If we make sure that you are promoting more mechanism at the national level, the UN country teams with the United Nations will be able to achieve that. And then I mean promoting more mechanism at the regional and international level. But again, one of my key focuses making sure to open the UN at the national level for more youth participation. And not only youth to be a recipient or just beneficiaries for our programs, but to have youth as full partners. This is something very important. I'm always saying that the United Nations had less than Louise than McDonald's. You know that. And yet if you go to McDonald's, you still wait in a queue to get a sandwich or something. So the UN here is not about serving directly all the time, people. It's more about facilitating the services, more about bringing people together to provide these services to others. And at the national level, this is very true because at the national level, the UN work with the government, work with civil society. And the UN sometimes have more ability to test things and to lead by example and to provide a bit more progressive sometimes ideas and partnership with the governments and civil society. So I think this is the add on the softball of the United Nations. And the youth work, I mean, this is not exactly your question, but I'm thinking now about the term youth policy. You are familiar with the term youth policy, right? Just go back to the 90s. Anybody use that term? I mean, it was not used. It was not even in the literature. If you go back to Orisa and Google, what is youth policy in the 90s? It was not there. It's because something called World Program Action for Youth in the United Nations. It was in 1995. Now suddenly we have a global momentum in youth policy and everybody started to catch up with that and the government started developing youth policies and strategy. So I think this is part of what the UN is providing, is to provide ideas that then they become the norm and they become the trends that everybody wants to provide them. And I think this is an added value for the United Nation which will continue to work that and to reaching out to young people at the national level is extremely important before thinking always about global initiatives. It's a really great point. In fact, where my former had it at USAID and when we were developing USAID's policy on youth and development, we absolutely looked to the World Program of Action on Youth as an inspirational, sort of foundational document that had been written and was really, you said, pretty ahead of its time in 1995 coming out with that. So we talked about the scale of youth and participation and advocacy and you've already been interacting with thousands of young people at platforms and online and in Google Hangouts and in many ways. And I'd be curious to hear what are some of the shared values or commonalities that you've heard from or observed among the young people globally that you've dealt with. And at the same time, recognizing as we do that youth are very different, a very diverse group within that 1.8, 1.2 billion, are young people of varying backgrounds and experiences and religions and so on and so forth. So how are you particularly thinking about participation and advocacy for minority youth or youth that have been the most marginalized in their societies? Love to hear your thoughts on that. Yeah. First, I believe that youth aspirations are very much similar. We are talking about they all aspire good education, they all aspire decent job opportunities, more participation opportunities and just look to the My World 2015 now. Education comes first everywhere, almost all countries and seems for decent job opportunities. So I think the question here is not the end calls, I mean it's not the aspiration of young people because they all aspire to be treated in dignity, to a human rights to be respected. So these are universal values in every sense that everybody wants to realize that. Where we stand in relation to achieving these are different. The complexity from a country to another is different, the political system has a large impact in the situation of young people and some research showed that, I mean democracies are tended to function way better in terms of youth development than dictatorships. So this is another issue, understanding how youth, what kind of issues that they are facing in their countries. So I think the question is not about the aspiration for interest, it's more about where we stand now in this particular country and how we can do, I mean some progress. And I believe that the UN is doing that, or did it show something called UNDAF, UN Development Assistance Framework, which is putting a work plan for the United Nations, all United Nations agencies for five years in every country. And this tried to respond to the situation, the current situation of a country. That's why even the system-wide action plan that we're talking about, the global one, spot a lot of emphasis on my own work plan about working in marginalized youth. And one of the issues about marginalized youth that there's, and this is very important to share it here as well, and Washington will think tanks and research centers, that we don't have enough research sometimes about who are the marginalized youth and how we can work with marginalized youth because we can identify the groups, but some interventions and issues, how to target and how to address this issue were still lacking in terms of having a solid understanding about the marginalized youth are addressing the issues programmatically. So this is an area, when the system-wide action plan puts a lot of emphasis on the marginalized youth and trying first to enhance our understanding about how we can work with that. And we are just discussing recently with Columbia University and other researchers around the world how we can enhance the research on the issue of marginalized youth. So we can, this research can inform the programs of the United Nations for young people. So we will not end up only talking about the more privileged young people. And to be honest, this is one of my concerns all the time just to make sure when we talk about 1.2 and not talk about the most globalized, those who have good access to education. And our programs should not serve only the business class travelers. And we should, I mean, look to the whole plane, look to the whole, make sure that, I mean, we are serving everyone on board. And this is very important to realize. So I think there's a discussion they're taking. And I am really hoping that the system-wide action plan will provide an instrument to enhance our delivery for young people, especially with marginalized youth. And we are always open for ideas, especially in this under-research area also. Well, somebody that often, almost always I should say, sits at the back of the plane and it seems like almost always in a middle seat, I absolutely appreciate your view on this and your real attention and focus to the full plane. Picking up on something you said about that we don't know enough about who are the marginalized youth, I think that it's a really good point and it reminds me of something else we've been talking about, which is we actually don't know a lot about necessarily about young people's wellbeing in a lot of ways at scale. And thinking about the Millennium Development Goals in particular in the post-2015, how do you see that platform and that process? And as you said, hopefully, not only young people's participation in the process, but prioritized in the outcomes. I like the way you phrased that in helping push that research agenda and push that data gathering agenda or effort, if you will, so that we can better serve young people going forward. This is a very interesting issue now. Who doesn't know about post-2015 Development Agenda? I think it's possible now. I met Karim Walshu from the Millennium Campaign when they started the whole campaign about post-2015. My first question to her was, did you really imagine it will take this global momentum? It was even surprising for her how it became everywhere, leading by national offices, the UN people participating online, offline in different consultations. And just a quick reflection in the post-2015 Development Agenda. First, I think this is providing again a proof that we are talking about the global citizenship now, because if you are a citizen in a country and you are joining the election and voting and voting for the Constitution, it's exactly in the same sense you are contributing to sitting the Constitution of Development to globally. So this is a global citizenship. You are voting for what do you think is important the next 15 years. This is, as we've said, it's important, but having said that, talking about the word we want is a bit tricky as well because maybe we have more than 200 goals to propose so far for the word we want. And I think it's time for some expectations management when it comes to the post-2015 Development Agenda. But also about understanding our rules and that. I'm always getting about trying to sell or promote the word we want initiative. As you tell us, what do you think is important? I think this is a real question. I mean, you shared with us your concerns here to develop not agenda and I just would like to elaborate on this. For me, this is not agenda. This is a contract. As a contract, exactly like the term social contract. This is a development contract. Why is a development contract? Because again, it's not the job of the United Nations. You tell us what you think and then the UN is going to implement that you just send to the world we want 15 years. It's not the job only of member states or civil society or private sector. This is development contracts and we are all signing in this contract. If you are sharing your reviews and you are becoming part of this contract and then everybody has a share in reaching that goals. So it's not about one party delivering for others and this is very important way of looking at it. So I think now we are in the process of consultation but we are also signing in that contract in the sense that we all have a share in and making sure that we are reaching the word we want. Again, post-2015 is not a wish list or a Christmas tree that we just show what we think is important. We need to be a part of that and part of the implementation. This is part of my messages all the time that I'm sure that when we talk about the post-2015 this is a golden opportunity to reinforce the global citizenship and sitting in development world development contract. With that, we should envisage our rules and the implementation and making sure that whether you have a small intervention or smaller projects or global one to align it always in line with what we are discussing as the word we want. So this is the way I see it. We're young people in that, I think it's clear. There are the people who will be going to the labor market in the next 15 years and just I have another way of looking at the post-2015. Imagine today the generation of MDGs. A young child who were born in 2000. And now we're talking about 2013, 2013 and 13 years old child or adolescent. 15 years will be when we enter the post-2015. And this will be the generation of the MDGs and post-MDGs. So I think we need to think of them as well as people who were, I mean, their lives are improved hopefully with the MDGs to enter a new era where we're talking about to continue investing in them and receiving many more youth. So I think post-2015 is something I'm very excited about, but I'm always try to put it in a way where, I mean, this is not about somebody telling others what they should be done but it's about everybody being important. It's interesting when you think about how MDGs, ultimately link to the work of the UN and member states and a lot of the organizations in this room to help reach those goals or whatever the new framework looks like. Interesting, going back to one point and we're getting ready to soon open it up to questions. So start having them ready in your minds. Going back to the way the Secretary General framed the prioritization of young people and women by and with and for and part of your work being about coordination and harmonization. Can you talk a little bit about how your work plan and how you see your work linking up with or coordinating with UN women and UNFPA and other organizations that are, in particularly thinking about young women, female youth and adolescent girls and how you see that connection in your work? You know there's a task force already for young women and adolescents, lived by and co-shared by UNICEF and UNFPA and joined by UN women. So there's a mechanism now for coordination that and if you look to my plan and the system-wide action plan there are a great focus in addressing this issue. Of course there are tremendous challenges here and different challenges please, Mark. But I believe by having this mechanism now in place I'm coming to bring the United Nations together not by invitation but they are already there working together and I think there's a great room for improvements here and the way we deliver. Tell you some of the challenges here that in programming and designing programs sometimes we don't like ideas or actors or beneficiaries but we lack money sometimes, right? So ideas are there, trade players and implementers but sometimes there are no enough allocation to reflect the commitments we have for youth and young adolescents. There's two programs and two mechanisms. So I believe this work comes to that focus as well in the partnership because it's time to explore how we can make sure that there are more allocations and more contribution to financially to youth issues, not only I mean as we tend to hear all the time that youth are important, youth create, youth are the future, they are the present, okay, I mean it's time to reflect that financially as well and the way we design and to work with the women organization and youth organization. And if you just look, I mean the least funded I would say among all civil society group are the youth led organizations and we have all this slogan all the time, nothing without us, without, for us, without us and nothing for youth without youth. And then if you look to youth led organization, I mean they suffer just to find because for me youth is not only about providing services to young people, it's more about having them participating and youth led organization is just a laboratory where you practice democracy at the very grassroots level and this is extremely important, they will do some mistakes, they might not be as professional but they are passionate and this is the double P's, a professional and passionate is the formula to work in civil society. If you are passionate enough, you will not, nobody will take you seriously and if you are professional enough, you might get funding but you might not channel that funding in the right direction but I think you need to be passionate and professional to working with issues. And one of my focus and talking about the World Youth Conference May 2014 hosted by the government of Sri Lanka and I was just discussing with the minister of Sri Lanka and some youth groups and I asked them, what are your expectations from a World Youth Conference gathering 1,000 youth organizations? They said post 2015, I said okay, everybody's talking about it so I mean we said talking about another declarations, another recommendations, another, I mean forum to call others to act. For me, this is an opportunity to have a post and just think about us. It's time to have global youth movement, a global youth movement that's bringing everybody in port and to fix the way we do youth work now. I think the right questions that should be asked now for the youth lead organization, how they can join forces and coordinate so they can have a stronger voice in the international development debates. And maybe just another quick reflection. If you follow the economic theory, just and look to all the forums, events, opportunities for young people, it's to a large extent driven by suppliers not by the clients. Just more about suppliers providing opportunities in different areas. And I think only by strengthening the youth movement, the youth lead organization, we will be able to have a good balance between those who supply, provide funding, programs, opportunities, those who are receiving them and to have a kind of good partnership. So one of my focus and hopefully by the World Youth Conference will have a good opportunity to bring together so many youth organization, we're talking about the number of 1,000 participant and I think that would be a great opportunity not to mention another declaration or we have enough but maybe just to do this pause and think how we're going to fix the way we work together so we can make the noise that we should do so everybody start listening carefully to what we are saying. It's a really important point that you raise a number of them but in particular the idea of not being afraid to fail and giving that space to do that often like one of the Steve Jobs quotes that it's the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world or the ones who will and sometimes you have to have that space to be a little bit crazy and maybe not necessarily succeed straight off the bat. And you talked about partnerships which was one of the other pillars, four pillars. So we have a number of folks in this room who are with different organizations and young people themselves as partners and you talked about the challenge of financing, of being able to do what needs to be done. So how are you thinking about partnerships with different organizations and where do you see that moving forward? One of the things that we are exploring is a global trust fund for youth development. And this of course on the discussion and consultation with different foundations. But I think it's part of what we can do is to continue partnerships very much linked to advocacy, to advocate for more attention to youth issues and more education and financing for youth programs. At some point, I hope it will be soon to bring foundations along with the UN agencies and youth-led organizations to one place to discuss the currency and how it looks like and how we can, what kind of possible ideas and initiatives that we can take to bring the partnerships and to be based in a solid kind of financial capability. But it's not only that, I think by allowing this opening channels between youth-serving institution, youth-led organization, UN agencies, member states by bringing them on board and by having a meaningful discussion about how we can work together. This can be a suitable partnerships. And so it was amazing what happened in the receptions and coffee breaks. I think we need to bring the right people on board and to allow them to interact. We provide hopefully a structure for this interaction. But I think there's a great interest special with youth-serving institution and some of them are joining here with a great experience they have out each. I think they can be with the United Nations agencies at the center of this facilitation for bringing new cameras to become more interested in multi-stakeholder partnerships. We are having one now for education, the Global Education First Initiative, which I think is an excellent way of facilitating partnerships for education. We're having another one for employment, with ILO, the World Bank. And I think another one for youth development in the sense of youth participation will be very much needed. Very exciting. So you've been on the job two months, so last question, what has been in all two months, what's been the honest sort of challenge when we did M4C and going forward as the potential challenges in your work? And with that, how can we support your efforts and hopefully help mitigate those challenges? Well, a challenge and an opportunity, again. Again, nobody's Chinese here, right? So I can't talk about China as I want, so I understood that the word crisis or does not exist in Chinese. It's reflected by two assembles, two words together, they make the word crisis. One is opportunity and the second is problem. So if you put together, it means crisis, which I think it reflects exactly when you have a situation where it's just a bit challenging, you can't think of the opportunity you can get out of it. And the opportunity here is, and the challenge maybe, is to try to put infrastructure for youth work in the UN system. And by infrastructure, I talk about having enough coordination mechanisms at the national level, regional level, international level. It's goes right as well for youth-led organization. I would love to see a strong counterpart to the United Nations from youth-led organization. And I honestly, I would love to see this happening. And I will continue to work closely with youth-led organization to innovate their voices in this international development debate. So this might be a challenge that you don't have enough of these mechanisms, although you have a lot of programs. So to connect that those might be challenging exercise, but again, it's a very interesting one because once you finish or you start doing this, what I call infrastructure for coordination, you will be able to see and to create a new momentum because you are basically connecting all the like-minded, all the very interested, passionate people about youth development together. And it's amazing how you can have this, which applied victim and asking others to do the same. So this is a challenge, but an opportunity. Your optimism is infectious and hopefully it'll serve you well. Questions from the group and online, don't forget, if you are following us on the webcast, please tweet questions using CSIS youth. So with that, some questions? We've got some mics. Here in the front, Abby. Hello, my name is Abby Flotemish with Atlas Core, which is an overseas fellowship for emerging civil society professionals. And thank you very much and congratulations on your position. I agree, your enthusiasm is infectious and it's very exciting. And yesterday I was actually in a conversation with UNV and we were talking about volunteerism and two interesting pieces came out. One is when talking about the term volunteer, there can be negative and positive connotations and also looking at the concept of volunteerism can also be in an island when it's not true. It's very integrated across a lot of different social issues and it can be an economic driver, can drive community health. And I think youth is the same way in that youth can have a positive negative connotation and it is also not an island. It's very integrated into a lot of issues. So I would love to hear what you consider your definition of youth is and then to look at how is we as organizations and as individuals really drive this notion that youth is an integrated part of social development and it crosses all issues and what can we be providing to drive that so people see the value of youth engagement? I want to take one more question and then we'll give a lot of chance to answer. Is there another question up here? Hi Gum, good morning. Congratulations on the appointment. I'm Fabian Koss and I'm with the Inter-American Development Banks Youth Development Program. And first I couldn't agree with you more about taking that helicopter approach and I hope you take that helicopter down to Washington DC more often because we'd love to have you at the IDB and we work with many, if not all of the UN agencies working on youth development issues. And I'm really interested and if you could tell us a little bit more about the work you're gonna do with this swap with integrating all the different agencies. I'll let you start with those two, since they're fairly big questions in themselves. Sure, I agree youth is not an island. I think it's similar to Voluntaryism and the contribution of young people to development is a clear. I think it's just more about finding both as Voluntaryism as a tool as well to have more young people joining the development agenda and to prove their relevance and the way that they can get things done. I was in Papua New Guinea just a week ago and I was looking to one of the streets. I spent a day in a slums actually and I was thinking because there are many halls in the streets and for some of them and there are many young people sitting next to the street as well. So I was asking them, I mean if five of us just go to the street and I'll try to fix it, it will not take an hour. But if the culture is to wait somebody to have a program appeared just to fix the street, I think it's gonna take a year or something. Though the thing itself it will not take more than an hour. Five, six young men and women, they go to the street and start fixing it. I think that's what it takes to do change at this very, I mean, crash-shoot level. It requires a whole, I mean, paradigm shift just in working with and supporting and inspiring and motivating young people to do things and to get things done. In my belief, I mean we cannot talk today about development without talking about young people. And any development program that is not truly taken into account the demographic pack, first of all, and the aspiration and sometimes the frustration of young people will not fly. Basically, it's a soul to start there and continue there. You can't tell, I mean, if we go quickly to that spring and a lot of the frustration that for me like to put it this way, young people are the driving force but they aren't basically nothing, they're a driver's seat. So it's a lot, I mean, frustrated for many when you are moving the vehicle but you don't know where it's going but basically because it's being turned all the time by someone else. So I think it's, this is again what I'm talking about. It's making an institution and the political process more user-friendly to be more open for youth participation and for meaningful youth participation. This is indeed very important. If I go back to the swab briefly, soon there will be a website, a user-friendly website for presenting sophisticated work plan. But I think part of the swab and youth is about doing the housekeeping, just internally in the UN system, making sure that we are figuring out how to work together but it will be a way to communicate with others as well and soon there will be a website that you will follow me and Twitter. I will be posting it as soon as it's ready. The swab is focusing on the issue of employment, entrepreneurship, political participation, protection of rights, as well as education, including sexual and reproductive health and health of course. These are the main focus of the swab and the way we think about it is by giving more acceleration for the implementation of the World Program for Action for Youth, which includes 15 priority areas. So in the swab there are five priority areas out of the 15, trying to give some more acceleration for the work and providing new momentum for implementing the World Program for Action for Youth. If you know that only 27 countries they reported the implementation of the World Program for Action for Youth. And I believe we need to encourage more member states to continue developing this. The swab is an instrument to make a coordination, to have it more systematically in the UN, but it's providing another very interesting opportunity to give a new momentum for youth policies at the national level. Because for me it's very important to have this exercise at the national level. When the swab will be implemented at the national level, it's not a mental exercise. It's something that provides a roadmap at the headquarters, but the implementation and the plan itself it will be tailored nationally according to the national priorities. At the national context, for me I believe in the youth policies and strategies as an instrument to bring all the line ministries, Ministry of Education, Health, Labor and Planning with all UN agencies. Up to my knowledge, we haven't invented anyway yet better than a youth policy to bring all national actors together to discuss youth issues. So this is a good job, this is a good umbrella way and the entry point to bring everybody on board. What the system-wide action plan providing here is again another way of bringing, let's say, the homework of the United Nations first to be figured out before we talk to governments and we advocate a stronger way for stronger and quality youth policies at the national level. I hope it will be available very soon, maybe in maximum two weeks time, it will be available online. And I encourage you all to look at it and to comment on it as well to provide you feedback because it's meant to provide a basis for debate and dialogue as well. That one. Ego, Mr. Ambassador in the front. Thank you very much for the excellent presentation. And as a politician, I had one question, of course, the goal, your goal is to increase the effectiveness, the influence of youth in individual countries. The UN has one force, that is, it's the word conscious, it's the only platform in the world where all the ambassadors of the nations comes together on a daily basis. And of course, they add to that the internet, that's the way Facebook, they influence decision-making. But politicians on the other hand will learn are not sleeping. They are deficing another model, that is to say, how can we neutralize youth movement before they become a political force or a threat? So this, all this introduction of participatory democracy and youth participation, it's nice. But what is the model you want to use to have the youth influence the few powerful political elite who make the decision, who ultimately take the decision in individual country? Unless you can influence the policy or the political decision-making process, it's nice to have youth movement and the politicians are very clever people that are going to say to the youth, we listen to you, we call you, you gave us advice, but when we decide, the youth is not there. So unless you have an effective model, you cannot influence and realize the goals and the priorities set forth for youth. Thank you. Great question. How do we move from participation to influence? We'll take two more questions that you want to make. Yes, good morning. My name's Takumba Koiki. I'm an Atlas core fellow from the UK. You mentioned about the fact that the youths are not an homogenous group and you also talked about the marginalized group of youths. So my question to you is twofold. In terms of your work plans, what strategies and ways did you engage the youths, especially the marginalized members of the youths, population into coming up with the work plan and what strategies are you actually using to in terms of implementing your work plan to engage the youths who are not able to access Twitter? I mean, I've just been able to go on your Twitter feed just now and I think you need to be more active on Twitter and also about the website, but what about the youths and the marginalized groups that are not having access to that? Thank you. Why don't we take one more question? One more right here. Hi, Daniel Acker. A couple of years ago, I was working in Jordan with a youth organization and you talked a little bit about the need to move sort of from a services-giving model to more of a participatory grassroots model. And the group I was working with was very much trying to do that, but the big thing that I saw was difficulty trying to get the groups that we were working with to also be seeking that and not still be stuck in a service provision model. So for instance, we did a survey of the youth we were working with seeing what do you want more of? What can we do more? And a lot of the answers were things like more money would be nice or more basic services, which wasn't part of the goal of the group to sort of create more involvement and create more democracy. So I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about just changing that environment of moving from youth engagement just being a services-driven thing to creating participation, and especially in groups where that's a fairly foreign concept. And also maybe talk a little bit about changing that from the government level as well, where you have many countries who have ministries of youth. But what I saw, again, was when we would raise concerns that the youth had that were more than just asking for more resources, many times these ministries were not prepared to deal with the youth voice, except in terms of perhaps providing more services. So just what are ways that we can engage, whether from an NGO or governmental or UN level on changing that environment and that concept? Give you a chance to address this. Maybe, because the question is very close to the ambassador as well about talking about the model or the contribution of the young here. They think we need the plans to look for what the elements of an enabling environment for young people can be to move from only participation to influence as well. And if you look to some core elements in this enabling environment, it will start with the legislation and the laws in a country and to make sure that the laws are youth-friendly. I mean, in some countries to establish a youth organization we need to be over 30 years old. Is that friendly enough for young people? If it's a youth organization over 30 and if the parliaments are blocked for youth participation? So I think a careful look to that, I mean laws and the legislative framework to make sure that it's supporting youth participation. That's a very important start. But again, you need to build the capacities and the know-how question remains very important here. Passive young people and youth structure to organize, to volunteer and to structure themselves in a way that they can influence. But participation is a very important starting point to influence. You need to participate and to clue people. So you can figure out how you can make your voice here affecting the policymaking and taking as well process. The know-how and the capacity building is another element in an enabling environment for young people. But if you have capacity building programs without mechanisms for participation, it's similar to training pilots that they will never take plane. And it's a waste of resources. And though I mean, I believe training young people is never a waste of resources in this sense. It always leaves something there. But sometimes a craze for frustration if you have the skills and talents that you are unable to practice them. So I believe that always training courses and the capacity building programs, they have to be linked always to actions. And if they are not linked to action, we are missing something here. Because it's not about doing more training capacity building programs to at some point it's becoming like industrializing the youth work to trainings and capacity building programs and turning it to almost an industry itself where youth work is a training. Youth work is a conference. I think it needs to be linked to mechanisms and where young people they can participate. So this is a third element, which is mechanisms. And the fourth for me is what we were discussing. Support and financial financing youth projects and providing support for youth project, for this SOS or the services opportunities and the support model. And I think this is a fourth element. A fifth what we mentioned in the beginning actually is recognition of recognizing the youth success and the successful stories and try to scale them up to address national concerns sometimes. So I think these are elements for a model that could make sure that we are moving from participation to influence. But it's also what we are talking about is that not all countries and youth everywhere standing in the same place. In some countries you have very strong youth lead organization and even youth cancels and other this is not possible so far. Others youth are struggling to structure themselves in a way. So if you have the global overview about youth movements and youth structures they are not staying in the same place so far. There are differences in where they stand and how they can influence. And some places they are already influencing actually change and San Miguel there's a rubber's movement, youth rubber's movement that's held by me in changing the government there and it's happening from place to another. Well, strategies for marginalized youth. Maybe I just mentioned that briefly. That this is not one strategy so far in the U.N. but it's a focus in all, first in the system-wide action planning youth and the programs that from different U.N. agencies and sometimes when I present and find myself speaking on behalf of the U.N. I want to go in more depth and start telling you about the great work of U.N. FBA with the work with the marginalized youth, the work of U.N. Habitat and Supporting Youth Lead Organization Providing Funding, the work of UNICEF, I'm sure you are familiar with UNICEF is a brand that everybody knows. The work of ILO with the Global Network for Youth Employment, there are so many great programs among other agencies indeed that targeting that and one of the discussion that we had in the last interagency network, again the interagency network is all head of youth programs from all U.N. agencies and there are consensus on that. That we need first to have better understanding and knowledge about how we program for young people, especially the marginalized group and how we can enhance our delivery. Just maybe to add, maybe I mentioned that briefly that I understand not all young people have access to first of all, I mean, information technology and I'll tell you something even more down thing with that. If you look to surround 1.3 actually billion, this cell do not have electricity. So talking about access to internet while we are talking about 1.3 with no electricity, it sounds like we are discussing with the strawberry over the cake and for them why they still don't have electricity and this is fundamentally, without electricity, even talking about charging your mobile and text messaging, which we think now is the traditional, it's no longer an innovative way for reaching out to young people, sounds even very problematic. And out of the 1.3 billion as we're talking about another 70% are young people as well. So this is again what I was talking about that we don't wanna end up serving the business class community, just to make sure that we are serving everybody on board. I think this is a great challenge and this is something I liked as well about the post-2015 development agenda that we are having the post-2015 online but there were heavy consultation happening at the grassroots level in 50 some countries where the US staff, they went out and reach rural areas and places. They were out hugely of the consideration for many years and discussing with them and explaining to them what do you, I mean, last point to mention here in all my missions abroad and all my travels, wherever I travel, I make sure that I'm not doing conferencing all the time, I'm not staying in the conferences and this is something I've been doing now in all my trips so far to make sure I'm meeting youth led organization, meeting youth and marginalized youth like the one I met last time in Papua New Guinea and then meeting the ministries of youth or the authorities and the government are trying to create a dynamic and facilitate that at the national level. So this is another contribution here. That's great. Time for a few more questions, we'll go in the back. Hey, I'm Marvin Matthew. I'm a senior at the University of Maryland. I'm 22 years old so I'm really interested in what you're talking about and what you're doing. I really found interesting the idea of entrepreneurship and the case for it on the international level on how we can catalyze young people to actually be the solution as opposed to be part of the problem and I'm looking forward to the swap internet platform as a place to crowd source information so we have access to it. That was actually my original question but the second question I'm coming to is what are we doing to open access to these UN organizations? Right now I'm actually working on the access issue in terms of technology. I have a program I'm working on with some college students called The Slice of the Pie and we're working with a $25 computer and trying to get that to local communities all around the world to catalyze their access to information and working with electricity internet. But what I've found is that once we can break the barrier of knowing who to contact at the United Nations or in a MasterCard Foundation, they can be very helpful in accelerating our work. So I just wanted to put that out there that we should really, in your capacity and whatever we can do, we should look to open source that so young people like me have access to it so the work we're doing can really be accelerated and so that 1.3 billion people that don't have access to electricity or the 70% without access to internet, we can make that happen and kind of wrap everybody in. Yeah, I would love to learn more about your work actually and this is something that we're exploring. How we can, I mean, parts of my work is to be the connector here just to make sure that whatever ideas we'll keep receiving we are linking them with that concerned UN agency and this. And I would love to learn more about your work. Maybe we can have some chat about it and then the issue of making the UN more accessible to young people is one of my top concerns that you will find it everywhere in all my speeches, all my work. And everything I mentioned, I think that the UN has to be easier for young people to follow it. And sometimes I could tell them that we need to make it a bit funkier so they can instead of all the acronyms and instead of all this, that I start using myself, I'm trying to force myself to use the real names sometimes without using the acronym. And surprising for me, and DGs for many, they don't know it. And it's not surprising to be honest. But I think we take it for granted sometimes that this is MDH, this is the post 2015, this is the SWAV in New York, this is, and that as DGs. And so make it easier because I don't think it's only about informing them that the MDGs is important. The way I see it is a contract again in a sense that it provided a kind of orientation or directions for anyone would like to work in development to align there, even the very grassroots kind of interventions in line with the global efforts to achieve a larger goals. And I think this is a very interesting way of seeing that all our work is fitting in a larger picture. And this is the great thing about having a development agenda globally that whatever you do at the national level, at the very grassroots level, can be aligned with something global to achieve way larger goals. And I mean, we keep hearing the word changing the world. This changed the world. And for me to be honest, it's not about change the entire world, it's about changing something in this world. And I think everybody can do it. And if you look to all innovators who really changed the world, they start about just changing something. It started with linking only students in one campus. I ended up to changing and linking up all together in Facebook, right? This whole start. I mean, start about something local. And I think the global or thinking global and actual local makes a lot of sense with MDGs and post-MDGs now. I'm just to follow up very, very quickly on that. I'm just curious when you're thinking about, obviously we talked about the MDG agenda at the post-2015, whatever you want to call it. And in a few months, will be the September of the UN General Assembly. And just in thinking about sort of concrete actions, I'm wondering if there's anything you're thinking about or that we can, you can hint us at that may be different or funkier this year at UNGA now that you're on board to open up even the UNGA as sort of the next big platform. Well, it's one of the toughest, you choose the toughest place to make it funky, the GA. It's a bit difficult to make it funny. Although the other day we hosted a jazz concert for Mark Miller actually who came and played at the General Assembly and everybody was dancing, just seeing like people dancing at the General Assembly doesn't happen every day. So that was a funky thing to start with. But with this General Assembly, what I'm trying to work on member states and I'm telling most minister and permanent missions that to this GA they have to be youth part of the official delegations. And they have to come. To that in the UN and UNDESSA, they have a program called the UN Youth Delegate Program facilitating to all member states who are interested to bring youth in their official delegations. And I'm trying to make that program for the youth delegates a bit funky. Bringing them with some of the worst leaders to meet with and to be part of the official delegation. So I'm really hoping that more governments, member states would respond to our call and they will join this program because I think we are doing our share in this. But at the end, it's the political one and the decision of governments and member states to decide to bring in young people in their official delegation. The UN is very much welcoming having youth coming to this year's GA because it's a special one. It will not be in the general assembly hall by the way because it's closed for renovation very soon. So it will be in a smaller room. We hope that will not be an executes for not bringing young people. But it will be a very important one discussing the SD report for the post 2015 development agenda. Well, brilliant. Well, thank you. I bet it's been a real pleasure. Thank you all for being here. Thanks for those online. And we certainly wish you the best and are very excited that you've joined us here today and look forward to all your exciting plans. Thank you very much. Again, thank you for the CSIS and the International Youth Foundation. And I hope we'll be always able to be in touch. Thanks. Thank you all. Thank you.