 Now more than ever, young professionals are getting opportunities to attend international conferences. Youth can bring spark, enthusiasm and new ideas to these meetings. But they often feel overwhelmed or lack confidence. They don't ask questions and sessions. They're too shy to network. They're unsure how to participate effectively. At the Global Landscapes Forum, first in Poland and then last year in Peru, we've been pioneering ways to effectively engage over 500 young professionals. In Peru, we ran a masterclass and mentoring program to give young people the skills they need to make an impact on the global stage. They brought their skills to a youth session where they contributed their ideas on key conference themes and discussed them with senior colleagues. And some were given leadership roles. 2015 is the year of action on climate change and sustainable development. Let's make sure we have well-equipped, confident youth leaders at the helm. I'm tired of hearing youth generation out of the future. Why? Because it implies youth, again, to remain as a marginal group. The youth has to be considered, has to be involved in these processes because youth is colourful, youth is dynamic. What we require is to be seriously and honestly involved at the centre of the processes. The youth voice is very important in all kinds of negotiations. We need a space and we need to do more incidents because youth is very relegated right now. Starting a month before the 2014 Global Landscapes Forum, the masterclasses helped 250 young people build their networking, facilitation, pitching and critical thinking skills. You don't need to have specials to be a facilitator. Five interactive webinars run by professional trainers introduced the techniques to those who were unable to travel to Peru. The energy that you bring into that room, you are responsible for that. While in Peru, 60 youth were given the space to reflect, practice skills with their peers in a safe environment. These are like the basics to more formal networking. And build their confidence before heading into the conference. The youth session was important because it allowed young people to interact with older and more experienced people on a variety of issues and also in the context of delivering a policy pitch to experienced professionals in the so-called Dragon's Den. Friendly, nice dragons but nevertheless, dragons. After a one or two hour facilitated discussion facilitated by young people, the results of those discussions about topics like how can we make Red Plus actually address the drivers of deforestation was condensed into two-minute pitches by these youth pitchers. To a panel that included Rachel Kite from the World Bank, Peter Holmgren, the director general of C4, and other professionals that are really making decisions in the real world. Don't be comfortable. If you are comfortable, you are not pitching at the right level. Okay? If you are comfortable, you need to leave now because we are dragons. The amount of learning that just happened in that room, not just by young people but also by older professionals was amazing. To bring young people with lots of energy to the table to try to discuss pressing and complex issues was just a fantastic opportunity. All this momentum meant many session hosts chose to involve youth as moderators, facilitators, speakers and panellists. A mentoring program also paired youth and senior delegates with similar backgrounds, encouraging them to attend at least one conference session together. Bring young people on to every research project that you do, every workshop that you do, bring youth to these sessions so that they can start to hear the conversations and participate in the conversations. Youth, which is the capacity to think things differently, to do things differently, and so that's what you've got to transmit. Use all of that creativity you have and not be scared of it.