Good afternoon. Everyone seemed to quiet down before I even turned the mic on. Good afternoon. I'm Nicole Golden. I'm the director of the Youth Prosperity and Security Initiative, and it's my distinct pleasure to welcome you all here today, especially if it's your first time joining us here in our new building. I want to thank our partners at Chevron for their ongoing support for the forum on development, as well as thank Johanna Nesseth, my colleagues Johanna Nesseth and Dan Rundie, who are the co-directors of the Project on U.S. Leadership and Development and co-sponsors of this event today, and of course, thank the USLD and the Youth Initiative teams for putting this all together. I also want to say welcome and thanks to those that are joining us online or following along on Twitter. We're using hashtag CSIS Youth, for those of you that are live tweeting as well. To say that global youth unemployment is one of the most critical and complex economic and social challenges of our time would not be an overstatement. Forty percent of the world's unemployed are youth. In Egypt, for example, 80 percent of the unemployed are under the age of 30. In South Africa, 40 percent of those aged 15 to 24 find themselves jobless. And we know the cost of unemployment to both young people and societies at large are mounting. Unemployed youth experience wage scarring or foregone earnings. They are more likely and more vulnerable to find themselves unemployed again in the future. Skill stagnation or the lack of ability to continue to advance themselves in the workplace. And we know that they suffer from near and long-term physical or emotional health issues. In lower and low-income economies especially where social safety nuts may be weaker, they are often more likely to find themselves in the informal economy, where working conditions may be poor, where wages are low, where the work is insecure. To governments at large, the foregone tax earnings, the loss, the extra cost of benefits to be paid out will mount up. We know that there are costs to economic growth in terms of lost productivity. And then there are the social costs that we often hear about associated with large youth unemployment, crime, conflict in some places, a more vulnerable group to radicalization or terrorism. So yes, the problem is great, but the opportunity is also great. Thinking about the cost another way or looking at the benefits if you look towards the experience, and this is probably nothing new to many of you in the room, but if you look at the experience of say East Asia during the quote miracle years, where the investment that had been made in their large youth workforce and their large youth population paid out in a more productive, gainfully employed, fuller employed workforce, and that therefore accentuated their economic growth. So that demographic dividend is there. The global, and this is a complex problem. There is no single cause and there is no single solution. The global economic downturn and the recession, inadequate job creation, and inefficient youth labor markets, often marked by a skills mismatch, all contribute to this problem, which brings us to the conversation we're here to have today in particular. A lot is being said about the challenges in workforce development, the challenges in particular of the global education and skills mismatch, the fact that young people are not necessarily being prepared for the jobs of today or the future. Add to that, or compound that with the fact that a lot of young people are out of school. They're not completing secondary school, they're not progressing into higher education, so they find themselves outside of the system, and therefore even farther at reach from education training or employability services. In one survey, this is interesting, of the African economic that the African economic outlook did of 36 countries in Africa, a survey of labor market experts, 54% of them identified the skills mismatch as a major obstacle, a major constraint on the labor markets. On Monday, McKinsey released a report of its survey of education in Europe, where 74% of education providers believe that their graduates were prepared for the workplace, but only 38% of the youth respondents and 35% of employers agreed, so clearly there's a disconnect happening here. In youth's own words, one young woman from Ethiopia said, in an opinion, if someone can give me the skills and the opportunity to work, I know I can achieve my goals. A young man from India once said, there's a lack of education so we don't get jobs and can improve our life. There is no growth for us. So again, thinking of just own young people's voice, this is clearly an issue on their mind. So where do we go? The workforce development question alone is a complicated one, and I know I probably have a lot more questions than I necessarily do answers. What are the critical skills we need to move forward? How is this amazing technology affecting the landscape? What is the different role of the public and the private sectors? How do they come together? What do we need to do to really advance this agenda and get the resources we need and engaged? So to help bring us to some of those answers and to start talking about the solutions, I'm very, very delighted to ask my colleagues for the day to join me on stage so we can hear their very unique and diverse perspectives and start talking about solutions. Henrietta Ford is Chairman and CEO of Holzman International. She's the former administrator of the US Agency for International Development, and she is a CSIS trustee. Erin Williams, also a longtime friend of CSIS, is former director of the Peace Corps and now Executive Vice President for the International Development Group at RTI International, and I'm very grateful that with RTI support and with Erin and Henrietta's leadership, we're going to continue to examine this issue and to continue this dialogue. Also very pleased to have with us here today Jennifer Silverman, who's the Vice President for Corporate Responsibility at Hilton Worldwide. Hilton is a principal supporter of the Youth Well-Being Index that we're launching this spring with the International Youth Foundation, who is our partner at the Youth Prosperity and Security Initiative, and I'm glad to see a number of friends and colleagues from IYF in the room today and really just very pleased with all of the different synergies we have in the room. Last but certainly not least, I'm very glad to have Dr. Root Banerjee with us today from the World Bank. He's the Global Director of the Social Protection and Labor and the Human Development Network, and we're very glad he's able to join us. As many of you know, the World Bank has been certainly at the forefront of youth and employability work for many years. If you have not yet read the 2007 World Development Report, Development of the Next Generation, I highly recommend it. Many of its points are of course very salient to our conversation today and to the continued policy and practice of youth development. So with that, I'd like my colleagues to join me and we'll continue the conversation. So I'm going to ask each of our esteemed panelists in turn to just start by giving us an overview of from their very different perspectives of what are the key issues they see, what are the some of the trends that they've seen as it relates to youth and development, and then we'll have a conversation. And of course we're going to ask you for your thoughts and questions as well. So Henrietta, I'm going to turn to you first. Thank you very much. And Nicole, I want you to know we're not just colleagues for the day. We're here, you're in, you're out. And we all think this is a very important subject. It's something that Aaron will speak about more about these shocking statistics. But when you just look at the statistic that two to three youth are unemployed for anyone who's in the general unemployed population, that's a shocking statistic. And it's one that when you think about it, you want to do something about. So let me toss in three ideas to get the conversation started. The first one is that as a skill for the future, one of the areas that we will need to really think about in terms of education systems is the idea of critical thinking and how to think. In many of the school systems around the world, we teach memorization of texts or financial books. We teach a system that is not necessarily how to think, how to research. But if we change our thoughts about education to what are some of the global questions, questions that need solving for our world of the future, things that are interrelated, economic, political, social, environmental issues. And we bring them into the classroom so that students have a question before them that they are wrestling with. And it's researchable, but there is not just one answer. There's more than one answer that's possible. That is the kind of a skill that will be enormously useful if you are to have employment in a government, in a business, in a nonprofit, or if you're to be an entrepreneur. So how we think about this notion of global competency in our education systems around the world I think will be critical. The second one is that as you look forward the next couple of decades, there will be an increasing demand for entrepreneurs. And when you are thinking about how to train people, it's one thing if they come into your office and you are filling out a new insurance form on your computer and there's a manual by the side of the desk, you have a desk and you have a computer. And that is one set of skills. It's another if you're an entrepreneur and you have to buy the desk and think about what you want on a computer system and what's your product and how do you price it. So training to be an entrepreneur is going to be very important. Many, many people who are now unemployed are going to be self-employed and they are going to need the skills of being an entrepreneur. And the third area is that as you look around the world, the demographics will give you different challenges and different opportunities. So that if you are in Japan and you are thinking about youth unemployment and you have an aging demographic, you look at the problem very differently than if you are in let's say Indonesia and you have a young population, a lot of growth, rising middle class. So how governments look at this, how those of us who are in the non-profit world or in the for-profit world think about our workforce and development will be very different and we really need to think about best practices around the world. And I see many of you who have been out around the world practicing many of these lessons learned and I think it would be very important, Nicole, as we go forward, to gather many of these ideas because they are going to be crucial. And I will point out in this and I'm sure we will get back to it later that when you look at the statistics, the MENA region has less mobility in its workforce and higher unemployment. And if you are a woman in MENA, it is even harder to get jobs, to get jobs outside of your region. So there is a challenge for us as a world to try to think about how we help world unemployment for youth and that is balanced by region. We don't want to leave any regions behind. Thank you. Thank you, Henrietta. So many good points that we absolutely will come back to, I'm sure. I think one in particular that struck me was bringing up the idea of entrepreneurship and I know some of our other colleagues will bring that up. The idea, it reminds me of the connectedness between entrepreneurship, between education, between all of the different areas of a young person's economic opportunity. Because of course we want them to be successful in entrepreneurship but also then to be successful in maintaining and growing their businesses. So I think how that connects into the education process is something I'm hoping we can come back to as well. But for now let's turn to Aaron and hear his thoughts. Thank you, Nicole. And thanks to CSIS for hosting this. You know, this is the combination, at least at this phase of the game, of a conversation we started a few months ago and I enlisted Henrietta in the cause to help us take a look at this major issue facing the world and that is the crisis with youth unemployment. So at this point in time we know that one out of six young people globally are unemployed. And so what does this mean? You know, the people in this room are very well versed in international development. And I recall as I traveled around the world in my capacity as the director of the Peace Corps and now more recently in my new position with RTI and I traveled to Darius Salam, to Nairobi, to Santo Domingo, to Panama City, Hanoi, to Bangkok. And what do we see everywhere we go? We see masses of young unemployed people on the streets. They can't get jobs or they're barely struggling within the informal sector trying to determine how can they survive in this rapidly evolving world economy. And so we know we're looking at a structural change in the economy globally. And all of us, the donor community, the national governments, the private sector, we're all trying to figure out how can we provide pathways for these young people to engage in a productive life. None of us on a singular basis or individually, no matter what sector you're looking at, we have the answers. This is a time when partnerships are absolutely crucial. We have to figure out a way for the private sector, for global corporations, to work with donor communities, donor governments, to work with the governments of the different countries to figure out ways to solve the problem. The other thing I think which is interesting about this time and I think we see signs of this with the Arab Spring is that we have to listen for the first time probably ever in recorded history to young people because they have some ideas that are important in terms of trying to address these major issues. They've come up with local solutions that we need to listen to. And the smart tech firms around the world are listening to them, whether it's Google or Microsoft or Twitter, they're listening to these young people as they move forward. So we're looking at structural employment. So what does that mean exactly? Well, we have a skills match match. There seem to be a ample number of young people but they can't seem to find the jobs that the private sector is offering. In private sector companies, companies often find they have to retrain the young people that they hire once they go through a lengthy process. This is a major, major issue facing the world at this point in time. So we at RTI took a step back when we were thinking about what's the world going to look like in the future? We have something at RTI which we call our 2025 Strategic Planning Exercise to determine what areas should we be engaged in in 2025 and what the shape of our organization should be. One of the areas that we're looking at right now in a very serious way is education and workforce development because we know this is a crucial issue. This is one of the reasons why we were delighted that CSIS took on this challenge and why they brought together a number of different partners and key players in terms of employment and workforce development. And we're going to be engaged in, we are engaged in a very systematic process. We're calling on outside experts. We're looking for solutions to the challenges that we face in terms of trying to provide productive employment for young people in the 21st century. It's a challenge that all of us have to be concerned about because this is a ticking time bomb and if we don't figure out a way, it's going to, it's going to certainly threaten global stability. Thank you. And with that I'm going to go right into a rep. He looks ready to go. Thank you. Thanks for these great comments, Henrietta and Aaron and Nicole, of course. And thank you for being here and for inviting us. I'll actually pick up on these great points that both Henrietta and Aaron just made with a number that I worry about a lot. And that's one million a month. One million a month are the number of young people in my country, India, entering the workforce. One million a month go to Sub-Saharan Africa. One million a month. Just these two focal points. So just every month in Sub-Saharan Africa and in South Asia, you have two million people entering the workforce. What's the world got to offer them? At the World Bank, some of you may know that we recently recommitted ourselves to a very ambitious goal. And that is, by the year 2030, to be a part of a movement that will end extreme poverty in the world, dollar 25 a day poverty in the world. And to help people at the bottom 40% of the population achieve increase in welfare at least as much as those in the top 60%. The challenge, of course, is, and that's why, among other things, I worry about the two million figure, is that whose fates are going to be affected by this? It is the young people of today and tomorrow. This is 2014. The 14-year-old today is going to be the 30-year-old in 2030. And if we don't improve their welfare today over the next two years, as Nicole was saying earlier, that is the way in which we will either make or break this target that all of us, I'm sure, would want to see happen. Now, having, from this very difficult big challenge, I hope that today's conversation will quickly go down to solutions as we talked about, right? Because that's where we have to figure out not just, I think we're all convinced that this is a terribly, terribly important issue. But then what? What do we do? And there, as both of you have said, the challenges are not one but many. The challenges that many of you, and I see many young faces, it's a bit odd, isn't it, to have people like me on a panel about youth, but the gray hair doesn't quite go with that. But for the young people, you know a lot of people, your friends, your family, who are looking for employment right now. But their challenges are absolutely and totally different from the challenges that are being faced by young women in the city I grew up, Calcutta, or in the rural parts of Mali, or in the slums of San Paolo. And I think that is the point that we have to tease out, because in this conversation, we often get attracted by these big numbers and sort of think of unified solutions. We talk too much, into my opinion, about youth unemployment, because that's what's in our minds, and not about youth employment, because many of the poorest people in the world are not unemployed, they're actually fully employed. The unemployment rates for the poorest countries are 2%, 3%, because you have to work. You can't afford to be unemployed, but you're working in conditions that are actually not the conditions that you would want. So the challenge there is to increase their productivity, not to necessarily in the short run have them employed. I want to end with opening one other door in the conversation that I think both of you, Henrietta and Aaron have talked about, and that is skills. Because when you talk about workforce development, the conversation quickly comes to skills, and again, a conversation that the un-nuanced part of the conversation becomes, oh, do they have the engineering skills, and that's what I need. But let me share with you a rather humbling conversation I had many years ago in my career at the World Bank, which changed my thinking about this. This was in the times of transition when I was talking to the Deputy Prime Minister of an Eastern European country about to enter the EU, and they, of course, were trying to get, attract a lot of investment. And in that time, he was, he came and said that, you know, what I've been trying for the last one year is to say, listen, we'll give you tax breaks if you come. We'll give you much easier business regulations if you come. And you know what the European companies tell me? They say, listen, that's great. We love that. But that's not enough. Tell me something. Are your young people people who come to work on time? Can they manage their emotions? Are they creative? Can they solve problems? Because we can teach them how to run a machine. We can teach them how to do the sorts of work that are needed to man call centers to man assembly lines. What we can't teach are those skills. So tell me about that. Tell me about your young people. And that, I think, is the skills challenge that increasing we'll face as the world of technology changes all of our worlds. And that's the last thought I want to leave you with. There have been some studies of the US by people such as David Otter and MIT, Levi and Murnain and others, which paint a picture that is quite warrisome if you project it out. And that's the so-called missing middle hypothesis. What's happened in the US and what is increasingly happening across the world in every labor market is that there is a strong demand for skills at the lower end of the spectrum, the very basic sorts of occupations. And there's a heightening demand for skills in the creative problem-solving situational types. But the middle, which provided the ladders to most countries' development, the blue collar jobs, are now going away. Because anything that can be routine, that can be programmed, can be done much more cheaply by a machine. So let's, I want to have a conversation perhaps as we get deeper into it. If that is the world that we're facing, what is the challenge for youth employment and how do we solve it? Thank you. Clearly, a lot of points to come back to. I think the technology one is an interesting one because, as you said, in some ways it is helping to eliminate some of the opportunities and the jobs that may be there. But at the other, at the same time, on the other hand, it is also whether it's through MOOCs, Massive Open Online Courses, or mobile education, in many ways is really a tool and it's creating opportunities on the education and training side that may not be there. So hopefully that's something that we may come back to. But for now, Jennifer, obviously a very unique perspective in helping us go from, I think, from the macro to the micro and certainly the hospitality industry and major employer of young people. So very interested and eager to hear your thoughts. I'll turn it on. You know, the way, and a lot of the points that have been touched on are obviously incredibly true for our industry. And I think, you know, we look at it sort of in three prongs, if you will. It's about connecting, preparing and employing. And the connecting aspect is huge because I think one of the biggest challenges we face in traveling, tourism, hospitality, is perceptions and overcoming perceptions about the kinds of jobs that we offer and the kinds of opportunities. And you know, I say this at every forum that I speak at, that it really is the collaboration with government and with civil society in reminding people about the wealth of opportunities you can have in this industry to get a portfolio of skills that you can leverage anywhere. And I think the soft skills aspect is critical because there's probably no better industry that really depends on soft and life skills than the service industry and the hospitality. So being able to work with people, problem solved. If you come to us with a guest challenge and we can't, we don't have life skills on how to work with you, how to look for a solution, how to bring in other people, chances are we're not going to be able to solve your problem very well and you're probably not going to come back to our hotel.  But I think that again, the mismatch of perception is a huge mismatch. So I would just take a step back that really, you know, what do we need to do collectively? There are 73 million jobs projected in this sector over the next 10 years. So again, it doesn't necessarily address the one million a day or one million a month, excuse me, that would be fun in India and Africa, but it is definitely part of a solution. And certainly as travel and tourism continues to expand and the ecosystem that expands around it, right? There's so many businesses that need and support hotels in a community or travel and tourism. So just to kind of begin to reframe that about the types of jobs that are there. So a big focus for us on the connecting is making sure that young people are aware of these jobs. And we have a lot of initiatives that we're doing now, whether it's through some of our industry associations like the WTTC, the World Economic Forum is looking at certainly some advocacy and awareness raising, but thinking about how you all play a role in that and making those types of information available to certainly the organizations that you work with. I'd also say that I think connecting for us is very much about our supply chain and young entrepreneurs. Again, what Henrietta said earlier, but certainly as that ecosystem, especially in Latin America and parts of Africa, we are so dependent on local suppliers. And again, we've got a lot of examples of companies doing great work around women entrepreneurs and other maybe indigenous entrepreneurs. And I think one of the things we've really decided as a company, how do we really work with those young entrepreneurs and help them get a foot in the door and understanding how they can work with a company or a hotel like a Hilton, which I think in many communities really stands for a standard of once you can get in the door and really source to that property, how does that open the doors for other things? So again, we're beginning to map out work with a couple different partners on what that supply chain work can look like, but leveraging our capacity, building education, working with WeConnect, which does certification for women entrepreneurs, but how can that be applied to young entrepreneurs so they can get that stamp of approval that can allow them to be able to better market themselves as they get into our supply chain. On the preparing side, we do so much work on apprenticeships and internships. And I think hospitality offers a great way where apprenticeships are really about that you eat, sleep, and breathe the operations of a hotel. And we've got great initiatives of where we work with young people on doing different rotations and understanding how if you're interested in finance, if you're interested in marketing, if you're interested in facilities management or FNB, there's so many different ways to do that apprenticeship, see what are the opportunities within our industry, but certainly to leave. And so I think the hands-on learning component has always been part of what we've done, but I think now we're really starting to think creatively about how to scale that up. We just, you know, talking about technology and technical transfer, we also realize that we're learning things from certain markets to address the world unemployment. We have one of a great UK apprenticeship program that's been recognized by the UK government that one of the gaps we saw and we got requests from our owners in Turkey, how could you take that apprenticeship program, adapt it for Turkey, and help us build the skills and the resources to staff what for us is a very aggressive and exciting pipeline. So a project that we're launching this year is a transfer of that apprenticeship program into Turkey and really being able to learn from that, but then also really adapt it to the needs of young people in Turkey and certainly to our operations. So again, every company does things like this, but I think really for us we have the benefit of being a global company, of being able to take what's working really well in one region and thinking about how to adapt that. We also are looking at life skills training programs and how do we adapt those region by region. We kicked off last year with an aggressive initiative in Saudi Arabia that was really going to focus on life skills training for the thousands of young people that we have to hire to serve our hotels in Mecca and in other communities. And so again, taking that training that IYF had developed, adapting it to the cultural context and the needs of our business in Saudi Arabia, we mapped out a program in Saudi Arabia. Well now our South Africa team is coming to us with the same thing. And so again, it's taking these best-in-class models that we can adapt and really focus on what the business needs and really be able to help them address a critical challenge that they have in finding talent to be able to grow and support the business. Again, for us it pretty much goes hand in hand. We don't see it as something that we do on the side from a CR perspective, a philanthropy perspective. It's very much about meeting the needs of growth for the company. And then lastly, the employment. I mean obviously probably don't need to go too much on that, but really where do we look at great opportunities in really building the next generation of hospitality talent and young people? And so everything from university partnerships to different types of organizations, but really helping to support and bring young people in and really helping that they will be excited about spending their career in hospitality and how do we continue to build that pipeline? Thank you all. I'm going to start with a few follow-up questions. Jennifer, since you were just on, can you help us go a little bit deeper with a few more examples? And in particular, where particular countries where you may have had more unique challenges going in and how you work through that with different partnerships and bringing up to speed, I think that would be interesting to hear where some of those particular examples may be. Sure. Well, we're in 90 countries, so we pretty much have unique challenges in every market. You know, obviously Saudi Arabia was a challenge. I mean it was a great business opportunity for us, you know, for those of you who follow what happened to Mecca, they basically moved part of the mountain and then gave out licenses to about 15 hotels and we got, you know, a slice of them. And the government and the ownership group and the various stakeholders said that's great. Now Hilton, go out and find the team members. And by the way, they have to meet this demographic. They have to be, you know, between this age group, Muslim male, et cetera, for the majority. So, you know, really our HR people were like, whoa, where do we even start? What do we do? How people don't want to go into this sector? This is not something that is considered to be an industry where we're going to get, you know, the best talent at the top tier and where do we go for the middle and for our entry level. So I think, you know, again, through public-private partnerships, certainly working with the NGO community, working with different government stakeholders, it was really trying to build a program that would help support the learning and development teams that had huge tasks ahead of them because at the end of the day, they have to get the hotels ready to be open. There's an agreement that's made with the owners, the hotels are opening in 18 months and you pretty much have to work to put a staff together. So I think that, you know, again, the challenge of maybe not realizing the enormity of what we had in front of us and how we were going to begin to work that was certainly one that we faced. You know, we have, I think, another challenge that we have in some ways is that with a lot of the unemployment challenges and some key markets for us, I mean, certainly in Spain, in Greece and others, where perhaps the hospitality sector, the hotel sector, isn't growing as much where new hotels are coming online because it's maybe more saturated, I think the whole visa issue and freedom of travel and mobility is key for us. It's a huge public policy issue for the company and, you know, if we can't get, if we know that there are talented young people that we can be bringing to other markets where we have huge growth needs and we can't necessarily find the talent to have some of the visa constraints or some of the other, you know, freedom of travel constraints is a huge barrier to the business. And so, again, I think this is where we really saw that there was great intersection between what we were doing from an HR opportunity to certainly the, you know, the public policy side and really being able to advocate for, you know, easier visa processes and, you know, really looking at, at streamlining the system. So. Great. Thank you. That leads me to a follow-up question. I think I'm going to post to you first, Erup, and then others, please feel free to join in, which is there's been some looking at where there are, the role, the importance of national strategies or national policies, not only around youth at large, but specifically on skills development and or education. Having, you know, from your perch, so to speak, what are your thoughts on this? How are they important and where do they need to be in order to be relevant and connecting across policies? Thanks, Nikhil. I think that's a fascinating question in the context of the fact that actually over the last decade, country after country have been doing some variant of national skill strategies, typically public, private and with NGO, the NGO and non-profit community. My frank answer, and I won't do that, that would be my fourth frank answer in a pre-conversation, is that, well, they are very high-minded. They achieve one important thing, but I think there's, for most strategies that I've seen in the developing world, and there are some good exceptions that I'll mention from a few countries in Europe, they fail to actually move the bar in any significant way. So what is the main thing that they achieve? And this is a conversation also I think that we can come back to. This field of youth employment work and thinking is enormously fragmented. And fragmented not just because think of the number of organizations represented here that work on youth, including in this podium, but also because within a country there are ministries and private sector and NGOs also working on different aspects of a challenge that actually move up to this. Strategies, one enormously important thing they do is do an inventory and then try to work out the coordination mechanisms. Now, why have, in my opinion, they've been not that successful in many of the developing countries? There are a couple of reasons, I think, and I don't want to tar all countries with the same brush, but one is that they're often put together by the wrong part of the government, often by the Ministry of Youth and Sports, which is typically the weakest ministry in any government. And I don't mean this pejoratively, it's just a fact. And therefore they don't have the political power that is needed then to take that vision of coordination to a reality. In the places where these sorts of jobs or other things have been successful, they've essentially been when the prime minister's office or the finance minister's office has taken over this agenda and knocked heads together and made the coordination work. The second though is that sometimes these strategies become, because of the essential consultative nature of preparing a strategy, they become a sort of dog's breakfast of everything. And therefore the strategic focus that you get from the beginning analysis, that all these fragments think there's a vision, this is how we want to go there, the implementation route doesn't have all of these great ideas that all of you have talked about. Then it is, oh, we will have a commission and set up this institute and we will fund 2300 training centers, not quite worrying about what they will teach and how they will get the students. And that's been the experience. Now one last example on the positive side after damning, with sweeping statements, which I apologize for, a lot of worthy efforts that people have spent enormous amounts of imagination and effort over, some countries have done this differently. The UK is one interesting case and point where they don't have the five-year skill strategy. What they have is a skill strategy that they continuously experiment and evaluate the work that is being done by the private sector and the public sector and the collaboration and they keep on updating it. Every year there is a lessons learned and new things, things close down, things open. And that is I think what a skill strategy eventually can be. Henrietta, please. Let me just add into our group's thoughts. There's been some good work done comparing school systems by Asia society and I'll just mention three examples. One is China and the ability to fund some teachers and administrators to travel to other countries to look at their systems and curriculum. I think that's a good practice. The second is Singapore, where there is a clear national strategy that what you're trying to do is to have participative citizens who are concerned about Singapore, who understand Singapore and its many cultures. And so you involve the parents, you involve a whole curriculum of what would be considered soft skills. And the third is Korea, teaching English as a second language now for so long and excellent programs and how to teach STEM programs means that there are many extra individuals who are ready to teach. And so there's a collaboration with American universities so that you can send teachers here. We never have enough STEM teachers in the United States. And as a result, they become national strategies that are good for your local students, they're good for your global citizens. And I think there are many more of these and I think it would be useful, Nicole, for us to be gathering some of the best practices that we have seen somewhere in the world because we can all learn from each other. Following up on Jennifer's wonderful comments about the role that Hilton plays in the world. I've often wondered, it's more of a question, why we can't figure out ways within the public sector to provide incentives to the private sector to allow them to assert a leadership role because clearly in the two examples that she used, the difference there in that marketplace was because of Hilton's global leadership and the fact that the government's always in their best interest to respond to a need that Hilton identified. And I think one of the challenges for the world, for the public sector working with the private sector, is figuring out how can we create a series of incentives that will empower the private sector that will provide them with a pathway to try to determine how they can be effective in providing this leadership because the fact of the matter is, they are experts at this. If you look at the three pronged approaches that Jennifer outlined, which I think is, I'm going to borrow from that pretty quickly in the future, Jennifer. It's a wonderful way to look at it. I think this is one of the big challenges that we need to look at and it's not all about money. It's about trying to figure out the best ways to create partnerships where we can work together effectively. Thank you, Erin. One other example, just to add on to Henrietta's, I was fortunate enough to be out in California last week and was looking at a very interesting model which some of you in the room may be familiar with, the Linked Learning Alliance, which is being implemented in a number of schools in particular in the California area. And I was visiting with the Kearney Educational Complex, which is outside of San Diego. And so the idea of going into small schools, but not only small schools, but technically oriented, bringing the hands-on learning, the project-based learning into the high school classroom. I visited a school for engineering and industrial design and one for digital media. And it was amazing. It made me very jealous that I went to school many years ago and not today. But, you know, thinking about, again, to Henrietta's good point about what are some of these other examples that are hitting this complex problem from the variety of different areas. Because I think one of the things we're starting to see is the need to start younger and younger. That we can't wait until high school to start imparting soft skills and life skills learning. Or even creating that opportunity. I think one of the things that I was most amazed about when talking with some of the students at this school, and it's an urban school with a diverse student body, many of them are lower middle income, was the opportunity that they saw how their horizons had been so broadened. And the impact of that in and of itself, I think, was tremendous. Many of them said they'd never thought that they would ever go to college. Now they're all thinking they want to go to college or they want to go into this profession that they never even knew existed and how their project was helping them. So, just a really interesting opportunity to think about how that can be applied. What are the lessons you can take from that and apply that in international context is something, I think, that's really exciting. But to carry on with another question, actually, to you, Ari, on a point that Arup made, a root made in his comments about policies and strategies and how one of the, I don't want to say failings, but one of the constraints on having a good policy is the starting point, is the baseline, is doing the good homework about where things are before the policy is being written. So, Erin, I know that you guys are doing some really interesting work around assessments and I wanted to get some of your thoughts on that and then also turn it up to others in terms of how do we know what we know, what do we need to be thinking about in terms of not only gathering data but doing the good monitoring evaluation in this space that is going to be necessary to be more effective. So, Erin, I'll give you the floor first. Well, I think that's a very important issue for us at RTI because we're always looking for ways to be a good partner to our major clients. In this case, for example, in the case of USAID, we conduct a number of assessments of USAID in the education sector. It's one of our most successful programs working with AID around the world. And why is it important? Because you have to have the data that's useful for policy makers to then review and decide how they're going to create their policies or adapt those policies that might be in place. And it's something that is usually surprising both at the national level and also at the local level because local officials often are removed from the policy makers and don't have a good appreciation of why this data is important to them. And we figured out ways to work effectively at the local level with teachers, with district superintendents, with local government officials to provide the kind of data they need to assess the situation of the education in their particular district in the individual schools and then craft a training program that will allow teachers to actually utilize that information more effectively in terms of teaching the children. I think in the case of workforce development, there's a great need to carry out similar types of assessments. And certainly, as a research organization, RTI, is focused extensively on research. We like to think that both domestically and globally, we're one of the leaders in trying to provide the kinds of assessments that can be useful to policy makers. It's really first and foremost in everything we do. Well, I'll add in that I think it's extremely important and whether it's for USAID or for corporations, trying to look ahead and see what the demands will be coming out of business is one of the toughest things to put your arms around. And yet, as a government policymaker, that's what you would like to know for your country and your school system. So how do we get there as a world so that we can get that information to our policy makers? We really need a lot of work on that. And then if I could just pick up on something that Arup had said about, do we really, our blue collar job is going away. One of the things that I have often heard and Jennifer can tell us if this is true in her world is that whether you are a hotel or whether you are a Chevron or an Exxon, you really do need to have good electricians and good plumbers who are available locally. And if you do not, your hotel, your infrastructure project does not work so that there is an enormous need for vocational training throughout the developing world. But Jennifer, I'll turn it to you if that is true for you. No, I mean, absolutely. I mean, think about your hotel experience, right?  It's a good place to do your immersion. But I mean, it was unbelievable. You know, I knew housekeeping, I knew laundry, I knew, I kind of envisioned how hard those jobs would be. But the engineers, the guys who are working, think of every light, every water switch, everything. I mean, hotels that have 500, they can't ever get ahead of a problem because 10,000 things have broken because we've all left the rooms, however we've left the rooms, and they've got to get them ready for the next customer. So you're, I mean, you're absolutely right. And I think that, you know, again, and those kinds of skills that they are learning, they can take anywhere. If they don't want to stay and work for us, if they want to go work for a hospital, they want to go work for another facility. I mean, you know, so I think that there's just so much opportunity that there are certainly the more glamorous aspects, perhaps of a lot of these jobs. But I think there's also the jobs that don't always get the appreciation, but it's what we call the heart of the house. And they are the ones that ensure that the hotel is something that, you know, again, is operating as efficiently as possible and you're coming back to. So, yes, absolutely. And again, those vocational programs are critically important for us. And we have, you know, partnerships around the world with vocational schools, etc. So. Yes. Could I pick up actually just on this last point, Henrietta and Jennifer, and then maybe link back to a couple of points you made in the original question, Nicole. The point that I really would like to emphasize is actually what you talked about what are the skills that you needed, right? It's not necessarily just the skill that you know how to fix the circuit that's broken. It is the detection of the problem. And it's the creative solution of the problem when you may not have the part that's needed, but the guest needs to be served now. Right. They're not willing to hear that, listen, the shop's closed and I can't get the part. So the bubble gum approach may need to happen. And I think those are the transferable skills. So the vocational, pure technical skills, we have an international survey that we call the step skill survey, which looks at the demand and supply of different types of skills, what people have in the workforce and what employers demand. And the point is that the pure technical skills are the point of entry. You actually need them to get the job. The soft skills is what you need to have to keep the job, right? Otherwise you don't have the job for long. And I think that's the balance in terms of the vocational versus the other skills. And what the technology is doing is that it's actually changing the mix compared to say the 1930s and the height of the assembly line era. I want to go back, Nicole, with your permission to linking a couple of points that you made together and telling a bit of a story. Thank you. The point about how the early beginnings matter for youth employment. And I don't want to lose sight of that. So let me give you a couple of very powerful evidentiary findings from Latin America, from Mexico and from Guatemala. In Guatemala, there was a nutrition program for zero to two-year-olds that was put in well over 15 years ago among the poorest of the communities. This was a randomized sample and therefore there was a rigorous evaluation done 15 years later. And you find that the people who got the nutritional supplements 15, 16, 20 years ago as kids had much better jobs and much better opportunities than did the ones that didn't.  Between zero to two years old is when, and I hate to break the bad news, all your neurons were formed at that point, since then we've been just losing them. So, all right, maybe the next thing in Jennifer's words. But actually, so early childhood nutrition is actually a large predictor of eventual job market success. Social safety nets are like Oputin and others in Mexico. Now, finally, the studies, the tracking studies are coming up of the families that received, poor families that received these social safety nets, transfers and those that didn't. And again, the kids who came from families that had social safety nets have had much better job opportunities in today's market than otherwise. I want to segue from this story to a final point about evidence and tracking. I was able to tell you these stories because in the field of social safety nets, which another of the fields that I cover in my job at the World Bank, there is evidence that has mounted rigorous scientific evidence about what works and what doesn't over a period of 15 years. Now, we actually know that if you make these small transfers to poor people in developing countries, $5, $10 a month, these can have enormous, enormous effects in terms of welfare and growth and national growth. This is not about social safety nets, but about evidence. In the field of youth employment, we don't have this evidence. We have a lot of anecdotes. We've been telling some. We have a lot of ideas. There's an enormous amount of work that is being done today by all of you. But we're not collecting the evidence. We're not facing failures and calling them because we don't want to break the bad news. Therefore, failures get replicated. Successes often don't because they're not known. Therefore, there is a need. I want to really emphasize that there's a need in this field if we want to go where we want to go to actually build a partnership that actually brings evidence to bear, collects evidence and is unflinching and facing that. With IYF, with Accenture Corporation, with YBI, with the RAND Corporation, the World Bank is actually putting together such a coalition. We call it the Global Coalition for the Youth Employment Solutions. We'll announce it sometime this year. But what we need is many, many more others to join and to contribute to this wealth of experience. We're going to be coming to you all momentarily. There's a lot of smart people around this room. Get your thoughts together. But I want to pick up something, a group said, and turn to you, Henrietta, first on this and then others, please chime in. Sort of a last thought. The point about early beginnings and early investment, and I think what I've seen with youth and employability or youth at large is there's been a fair amount of progress. Of course, their USAID and all the implementers have been doing this work for years. Under your leadership, Henrietta, and over various administrations, we've seen the expansion of public-private partnerships in this space. I remain proud of the USAID policy on youth and development that was released last year. But where we started, I don't know that there's enough attention to that life cycle of youth. So we invest early and there's a lot of support for childhood, right? Child nutrition, child survival, and then what? To your point, the kids are growing up and they're quickly, very quickly moving into the adolescence in the youth period. So Henrietta, first from your perspective, how do we get this investment? What's the challenge? What's getting in the way of really seeing, as my good friend and Collie Dan says, the people, time and money going into this area, going into support young people? It's a great question, Nicole. And I do not have the answer, but I think there are a couple of ways we could think about it. One is that we have not yet made the case for the urgency. Erin and Eruppe and Jennifer and you, Nicole, have been thinking about it in CSIS. Thank you for hosting this. Has begun to make that case, but we have not yet made that case. So that when you have to stack it up against funding that would go to save lives, you know that the youth will probably be in relatively good health and they will be fine. They just won't have a job. And so it doesn't seem as urgent, but it is urgent and it is now urgent because time is ticking and this time period between ages 15 and 25 is crucial in a person's life to get a job. So all of the initiatives that are here, and I see several between the International Youth Foundation and Partners for a New Beginning, NAPIO and others, all of those initiatives are really important. They are public-private partnerships, but it's a coalition of private sector entities and public sector that really drive the urgency of this. The second is probably to Erin and Eruppe's points, which is that we don't have quite enough data to know what would work if we did more of it. So scaling up to something that becomes a worldwide solution would be very important, but it may be that we do not have a worldwide solution. Our regions, our countries, our demographics, as I mentioned in the beginning, are so different in the world that there may be several solutions or routes to solutions, but we need to start somewhere and maybe we start with six very good ideas and begin them and try to collect more data. But I think between the urgency and enough information to know about where we would put more time, effort and money, that lies the answer of how this issue can be raised to world's attention, but it is absolutely crucial for our future. Thank you. Oh, I didn't know Jennifer, you had your mic on. But you can keep it on. So I'm going to pose this sort of final question, but really make it be an opportunity for any sort of final thoughts before we go to our very smart and thoughtful audience, which is just to pick up on something Henrietta mentioned in her opening comments, and I feel like I'd be remiss if I didn't give us all a chance to comment on, which is the particular thoughts or how from each of your different perspectives we should be thinking about young women as we approach this challenge and this opportunity. So I'm going to leave it at that and we can start with Jennifer and then we'll go to you all for your questions. So sorry, am I answering that? Oh, okay. Well, I mean, I guess I wanted to just take one step back because I think to build off something that Henrietta said, I mean, I think that like many other issues, this is infused into every other development challenge and every other business challenge. And so I think that one of the biggest issues and certainly the women's issue face that is it was sort of this marginalized issue off to the side. And I think that, again, coming as a non-policy person and speaking from a company perspective, I mean, young people are the future of our business. There are future guests, there are future team members, and there are future partners. So we're about ready to celebrate 100 years and five years. Well, for not continually investing in the next generation, we're not going to get to the next 100 years. So I think that making sure that it gets elevated to a much more mainstream agenda, I know that, you know, a group and others are working to try to get this recognized by the World Economic Forum by CGI. I mean, not having these be marginal issues, I think, can definitely be one step towards that. I guess on the women's, you know, we don't necessarily, at least right now, we certainly are addressing a lot of issues that perhaps impact young women, maybe more than they might impact young men. I wouldn't say it's a specific strategy. I mean, again, in the sense that our team members are pretty much, you know, divided in that sort of 50-50. So, you know, again, depending on different roles and certainly different, you know, focus areas. So there's some initiatives that we're working on that certainly may apply more to helping young women, whether that's through their safety and security on a lot of our trafficking programs, on a lot of other initiatives on girls' education and making sure that they're not trafficked and getting into vocational and hospitality training programs. But they easily could be for young men also, should they be in those vulnerable positions. Excellent. I think when talking about youth employment broadly, it is, again, terribly important to think about young women. But I don't think it's because in some ways, if you look at the global numbers, they are necessarily more or less vulnerable. It actually depends on the context. But they face specific challenges that actually have to be understood and thought through. It's a very broad issue, and I don't want to bore you, but let me give you one example from the Middle East, from Mina that, Henry, you were talking about, of a way that a young entrepreneur has tried to address this. And this is actually a colleague of mine in the Council of the World Economic Forum, who's a young entrepreneur who is 27 years old, May Habib, who created a very interesting business. She's based in Dubai, and she runs a translating business. A translating business that uses young, Arabic-speaking and bilingual women from all across the Middle East. It's already a billion-dollar business. People work from home. So you understand the specific cultural context in the Middle East. These women are often highly educated, but for cultural reasons, cannot work outside home in the workplace. Because of technology, going back to technology, and the Internet, this may run this business by having people getting assignments from home. They have apparently amazingly good workers, and they have a business opportunity and a work opportunity that they could never have had if these pieces hadn't been put together. So thinking in these ways and creatively around these problems are the ways to go. Well, at RTI, we're committed to doing the research, collecting the data, and using that data in an effective way to create solutions for dealing with youth unemployment and youth employment. It's one of the things that is important to us as we look at our future in terms of our strategic planning. It's clearly important to all of the partners we work with, whether it's in the donor community or with private foundations or with private corporations. So we're going to continue to be engaged in this. I've learned something today which is going to be important to us in terms of the world bank's work and the work we need to engage in, in terms of the world bank. So that's something that's at the top of our agenda in terms of our research agenda, and more importantly, in terms of our own investments, our corporate investments. Secondly, in terms of young women and girls, I think it was Bill Gates who said somewhere to speak somewhere in the Middle East that if you ignore the development of half of your population, you will not become a modern country in the 21st century. And I certainly subscribe to that. And if you look at the work we do with donors around the world, in terms of the education sector, there's always a strong component and a focus on trying to improve opportunities for young girls and women so they can become productive members of society. No matter what the cultural context is, there's always ways to work within that cultural context. And I'll add in a couple of things. The first is a vote of confidence for what Jennifer talked about with her supply chain. This is a great way to include women because they are often, because of land titling or something else, they may not own their own business, but they could be a supplier to a business. And it's also something that Coca-Cola and a number of companies are doing because many of their retails are women. And so the training of, the focusing on women who are in your supply chain, either because you are bringing in a product or a service or because you are sending out a product or a service is a great way, I think, to include youth and women. The second one is an example out of Japan. Now that the Prime Minister has said that he would like to see more women in the workforce, the issue comes up, and we were talking about it earlier, about the ability of having immigration that would allow more child care. This is good youth employment and it allows you to see another country and know another country. But it also means that you can free up your own women to be working in many facilities and not to forget that there are many family businesses out around the developing world. And sometimes you do not have a young man in a family that can follow you in business. And as such, the young women are being trained on boards of directors and they're being trained to run companies. And that is also a very good sign. So we just have to be very open and inclusive at all levels of society and all vocations that the young women are included. So whenever any of us are out doing programs, just make sure that you always have half the room, young women. Thanks, Henrietta. In my view, I think this is one of the interesting and challenging questions in this space is how to ensure that we're being inclusive and promoting gender equality. I like the way Jennifer phrased it while at the same time not creating an unnecessary, most competition for resources, which I think sometimes tends to happen within the youth space. So on that note, I know there's going to be a lot of smart questions. I know I'm going to turn first to my good friend and colleague, Dan Rundie. And then if you can signal, we've got some mic runners that are here to help as well. Great. Thanks very much. This is a great panel and really wonderful to have all of you here. I have a two-part question. The first is, can you talk a little bit more about the role of technology in training? Thanks, Aru, for raising that case example in the business side. But I think a large part of training in the future is going to be technology delivered. I think about classrooms. They're these, I forget, MOOCs. I think they're called.  But I know most people under the age of 30 that comes trippingly off the tongue. It doesn't come trippingly off the tongue for me. But I know this is a big deal. So could you talk a little bit about sort of massive training through technology? What that means? The second is sort of the end of credentializing. I think in the past, people got university degrees or got master's degrees or got MBAs. There's a really interesting article in the Harvard Business Review online over the last couple of weeks talking about the end of credentials. And that instead, what you get, even at least in the developed world, is you get these recommendations on LinkedIn that I don't pay a lot of attention to, but someone will say so-and-so recommended you, et cetera. That sort of thing actually matters in the future. It's a different kind of signaling. So sort of a hundred years ago, we set up these credential degrees, talk about what it means in terms of how do we signal in a marketplace that somebody is actually has those soft skills or has those actual abilities. Not just are they teachable, but how do we actually signal that? We'll do one. It's a big one. These are great questions, so thank you for that. Let me give some thoughts, some of them contrary and as usual. I think the potentials of technology for training is important to think about what sort of training. If you look at the literature and the scientific research on training, there is a clear thing that comes out in terms of the returns on training. What sort of training works? Vocational training included. The type of training that Jennifer was talking about on the job training. That is it. So essentially training from a training center, if not actually accompanied by and reinforced by on the job training mentorship and interning, really doesn't do the job. So things like MOOCs, which by the way my daughter is now just as of now finishing a MOOC on neuroscience, she loves it. So I think it's great, but they do an initial introduction, but they don't do the sort of critical thinking, training, et cetera. I used to be a professor. The best classes, of course, and all of you who have been recent students would agree, are the ones which I led a tutorial with two students arguing back and forth and asking them to solve solutions, not the ones where I lectured in a space this big. So I think it's important to think about what sort of training for what, for introductory material transfer. I think MOOCs and the other technological things really democratize the process. They totally get rid of all sorts of barriers in terms of transport and accessibility. But then if you want to get the sort of training we're talking about, it may be something different from at least our beginning nascent understanding of the profession. I love your question on credentializing, and there I'll go the other way. Actually, what the likes and the star ratings, et cetera, do, to my mind, is actually what we normally do anyway, except it just increases the scale massively. So when you want a plumber to fix something in your home, what do you do? What did you do? You ask the neighbors. Then what you do is now today you go to Angie's list, where there's a smaller group of people who you trust because of Angie, and you go by their recommendations. Angie actually doesn't recommend it, but other people who are like you recommend it. So what you're doing is that you're scaling up this sort of referral in a way that is immensely empowering. Now, having said that, think about the dangers as well, especially in the short run, I'm not worried about the longer term, because as with the fact that if you didn't have neighbors who you could talk to, if your neighbors didn't like you, you would be excluded from this recommendation. In these digital domains, unless they're made perfectly democratic and open, and Angie's list is not, you have to pay a subscription to get in, you're actually creating different haves and have nots and inequalities, and we have to be very careful and cautious of that, especially for young people who may not have the access and resources that we may have. Just to add on to that, one of the emerging models, if you will, are platforms along this line that I've recently become familiar with, but again, I don't think we have the evaluation of or the experience yet to be able to say if it works or doesn't, is that there's actually term for it, which is microcredentialing, which is taking these LinkedIn or other kinds of network-based referrals and formalizing them in some way, whether it's from a more established accrediting, credentialing institution, so whether it's, you know, you take this one specific course at this or this MOOC, which if you haven't googled it and you don't know what it means, it's massive open online courses for those that have been wondering, and then you get this microcredential. So that is posing as sort of an emerging potential practice in this space that I'm certainly interested to see how that pans out. Let's take two more questions to make sure we have time to get to a couple more issues. My friend over there. Hi, my name is Sarah Jones, and I'm from Social Impact. We do evaluation research, and I'm a youth specialist. My question actually relates to, we talked earlier on about the beginning of the lifespan, right? So the importance of nutrition, for example, we've talked a lot about soft skills and developing those soft skills, and of course, parenting, family situations obviously play into that as well. What I'm curious about is the other end of the employment cycle. We've talked about how there is a need for many youth to be employed, and we also have a situation where there's been an economic downturn which has caused people to be employed longer. And I'm wondering if any of you have put any thought into how we might bridge the needs that youth have and the experience and expertise and soft skills that you've talked about together to help basically both individuals excel and move forward. We're going to take two more. We'll do this World Bank style. My colleague right there. Hi, I'm Harry Bernholz with RTI, and I'm running a local governance program in Morocco, and a comment I would like to share is my observation has been, and I work a lot with youth. Youth is an important part of our program, integrating youth into local governance, and I found that it's been most successful. Well, first, that youth are not, when you look at it at the local level, they're not looking at what's going on at the national policy. They want to know what local institutions, local services there, are going to be available to help them engage and enter into job markets. So for me, I think one of the things we need to be talking about is good governance practices as they tie into workforce development. And we also have to be looking at the accountability and responsibilities that local government officials, whether it's communes, governments, provinces, all those institutions, have as owners, and it's not just a national policy or a global, at a global perspective, but we really have to look for local solutions to resolve a lot of these problems. Thank you. We'll take one more. Yes. Hi. I'm Patrick Fine from FHI 360 First. Thank you CSIS for hosting this. It's timely. And thanks to the panelists for taking the initiative to speak out on these issues. I'm glad you raised the issue of funding because that weighs heavily on my mind. When I look at the private sector, the private sector gets it. And you look at both in its core operations and its CSR, it's concerned about youth and productivity because that's its future. When I look at the public sector, especially the U.S. public sector, but not only the U.S. public sector, it seems to be outdated in its outlook and still focused on the kind of 1990 Xomtian education for all scenario, which the world has moved past and the progress, the demographics, the changing in the workforce structure with the shrinking middle, they call for a different response, a different policy response, and a different allocation of resource response. So I hope that you all and this kind of forum can help all of us to raise the consciousness that it's time for in the public sector to take a leaf from the private sector book and revisit its policies and its resource allocation. Thanks. Thoughts, comments on the comments and question? Well, certainly we agree with Patrick Fine. No doubt, Henrietta, is that correct? I think that, you know, in all of these cases, I think the real solution is to create the kind of public-private partnerships with the private companies in the lead in terms of determining what they need to employ large numbers of young people. I mean, it's absolutely essential. You know, the marvelous examples that Jennifer has given us today is a classic example in a growth sector, what needs to be done worldwide. And we've got to figure out more creative ways to do that. And resources are important. You've got to direct more resource. I think you're absolutely right, Patrick. I think the other thing is, going back to Harry's question about local solutions, I think that oftentimes, local officials are not empowered, nor do they have the resource to be able to respond to the needs that they find, because, after all, as Tip O'Neill once said, all politics is local, well, all development is local. And you need to have people engaged and empowered at the local level to do that. And so I think that the donor community can play a role in that by trying to figure out ways to support government initiatives and the private sector initiatives that tap this reservoir of leadership at the local level. It seems to me it's an important policy consideration. I'll tag in that I think on this governance question, Singapore has a very different approach, because they are trying to pair being involved in your society and being involved in the governance of your city, your county, that that's very important. And I think that could be a key for many other countries, because it isn't just employment.  And so I would think of it as a community-wide connection. WEF has a big initiative coming out later this month on youth employment and development. And I think they will have a number of things to say on that. And one will be how to measure this closeness of connection to the community. But I think that's a route in. And then we all agree with Patrick. And so we are hoping that Patrick is going to give us our call to arms, our brilliant writing and articulation for why this is urgent now. But if I could go to your comment about the technology side and pairing of the older and younger, a lot of us are moving toward MOOCs. And a lot of us are also trying to do things with our colleges and universities on the X files. So these are all free classes that are coming online, rather like the Khan Academy. What has not yet happened is there is not a way to monetize that. So that if an older person or an organization does do a class, how do they get remunerated for it? Right now it's a gift. And I think that will continue. But for this to be raised up to a critical mass where you could really pair generations together, I think there needs to be some form of remuneration. But I don't know how that will come about as yet. But it's a key issue. And I think it's one that a lot of countries are interested in, a lot of companies are interested in. And the non-profits are really going to be strong on this, I think, in the next 10 years. They're going to be reaching out to all the older citizens to try to get enough information from them that they can transfer into the youth. Thanks for being here, Jennifer. I'll just add one thing I think on the, certainly on the generational question. I mean, again, and this may sound at a very basic level, but one of the biggest assets we have in bringing the next generation is our existing team members. And so really figuring out how to leverage them, again, through the mentorship programs, through the career awareness program. We have a huge initiative that we do every May now, which is all about bringing young people into our hotels and job shadowing and mentoring with our existing team members. So again, for them to really see the value of paving the way forward for the next generation. But I think also it's a great way for them to continue to hone in on their life skills and other professional development opportunities. So again, it's not at a very maybe technical level how to address some of the challenges and certainly the skills gap. But I think really getting your own team members involved in something like this is a great way, both from a team member engagement perspective and then certainly helps a pressing business need. Just to quickly add on that, and then my colleague Dan is going to come up and share a few words with us. One of my favorite youth leadership, youth participation, quality of any sort of youth governance and intergenerational practices is the idea of reverse mentoring. It's something I'm looking for a reverse mentor. There's any young people in the room. But I think whether it's in the workplace or outside, but the idea of how we as older, more experienced workers can have much to gain and much to learn from our younger workers. And I think that's another practice that we can think about. Dan, you have something to say? Well, it's always a great market signal to see how many people have stayed. I think it speaks volumes about how sailing at the topic is. Thank you very much, Nicole. Thanks very much to the panel or thrilled that you all have stayed so long. I just wanted to make a public service announcement that we have another Chevron form next week on January the 22nd at 130 on comparative bilateral donor perspectives. We're going to have somebody from Japan, somebody from the U.K., and someone from AID talking about how we meet our global challenges and from different perspectives. So that's at 130 on January the 22nd. Here it's another Chevron form, just like this one. I won't take any more time. Thanks very much. Over to you, Nicole. Thank you, Dan. With that, I just want to ask you all to thank you all again for joining, as Dan said, for staying this long and ask you to join me in thanking again our very insightful illustrious panel. As I said at the start, we're hoping this is the beginning of what will be a more thorough examination and dialogue on these issues, and we look forward to continuing that with you all. Thanks again.


Yeah, so today a bunch of the W. Lee girls decided to come out here, you know, give back to the community and we're just going around to the different wards and seeing a bunch of children, just hopefully putting a smile on their face, getting a couple more fans. But yeah, just bringing in the community together and hopefully put a smile on their face for the Christmas season. I think it's really nice to get down here and do something for the community, to be so these kids aren't having a tough time at the moment and it's nice for us to come in and try and make a difference and we got a couple of smiles today which is really nice to see and I think that's the main thing just to put a smile on someone's face and make them feel loved at Christmas time and make them feel a little bit special today. Getting something away and taking their mind off of, you know, their daily struggle, it's amazing for us to see those smiles and just to see the reaction that it's helping them so it's good for them to have as much cheer and happiness as they can in this season and we're just lucky to be able to get that from them. I guess I try to do that on a day-to-day basis, being a teacher and I left to work a little bit early today just so I could come here today and that was really important to me because I know the difference you can make in a child's life and that's probably one of the biggest things and why I became a teacher because I love doing that so yeah it was important for me to come here today and do that.


Hey there friends, thanks for checking in today. We're looking at a new alpha foxtrot 1911 S15 a subcompact nine millimeter handgun that Takes the Glock 48 and the Glock 43 X 10 round mags and an S15 round mag from shield arms hence the name S15 three and a half inch barrel and has a DLC polished Coated slide and aluminum frame a pick rail right there. It has forward serrations and a 4 pound trigger pull G10 grips. I want to talk about the grip Whip shortly. Let's go ahead and take a few shots and see how this S15 fires green sights. I want to show you those And that's it It has green sights that are night night sights. They are painted. I'm hoping that picks up there But I want to tell you about the grip. It has G10 grips on there or actually they're machined in they're not G10 They are machined in the aluminum frame So correction with that, but it is thin and what I meant to say is that it is actually thinner than many single stack 1911s with G10 grips. How about that? Alright, so it has a a sub safety on the left side for righties But overall a nice feel to it now This this has the 1911 feel all day long with a three and a half inch barrel Aluminum frame and that same trigger pull that so many people love. It's not inexpensive You're looking at north of sixteen hundred dollars MSRP So, you know, if you look at the gun store price, maybe around 1500-1550 is what you're looking for. You're looking at with the alpha foxtrot S15 But nifty little shooter there. All right bull barrel four pound trigger texturing in both the flat mainspring housing and the front strap and Once again a machined grip One of the things that is definitely worth mentioning is that Rider from riders range, which is where I'm at. He ran this gun through a thousand round test never cleaned it and It passed with flying colors. So a thousand round test No cleaning. He had zero malfunction. So that that speaks to the reliability of this S15 and that's pretty good. That would be good with with any gun let alone a 1911 that we like to keep Crisp and clean now it is a 1911. It has many 1911 parts to it It breaks down like a 1911 or most I should say because some of the bull barrels are a little bit different fully wrapped barrel as mentioned aluminum frame and that crisp trigger pull That is so nice DLC polished coated slide. So it's a good-looking handgun Shoots shoots pretty nice. I could have done better with it That's for sure, but it takes 15 round mags in a subcompact handgun, which is pretty good Nice draw. I think alpha foxtrot did a nice job with it If you like videos like this, please subscribe and share. I always appreciate thumbs up button Thanks for watching and you guys be safe