High-level policy dialogue on youth employment at the 5th Global Youth Employment Summit (YES): Rework the World 2010

Rework the World is a global initiative that brings together the best local initiatives from around the world - those that can create new employment opportunities and speed up the change towards a sustainable society- with the aim with the aim of creating new employment opportunities for youth worldwide and mobilizing young people to participate in sustainable ventures.

The 5th Global YES Summit – Rework the World will bring together over 2000 participants, including entrepreneurs, opinion leaders, local and global leaders in politics, civil society and business. Approximately 150 different initiatives and youth-led projects will be presented at the Summit. These initiatives will revolve around the following five themes: Energy, Water, Land, Cities and People.1

A high-level policy roundtable, organized by the ILO and the Tallberg Foundation will be held on 4 and 5 June. This event will bring together representatives of governments, heads of international organizations and multilateral agencies, business and opinion leaders, and senior researchers. The main objective of the dialogue is to discuss the underlying reasons of the failure of the current economic and institutional systems to deliver decent jobs and to ensure a sustainable planet. Another objective is to distil lessons and examples for Summit’s participants on policy implications, both at international and national level, leading to the development of major initiatives to promote decent and productive work for youth.

The ILO will contribute to the Summit by participating in the session that will introduce innovative initiatives on the theme “People” that focuses on the promotion of decent and productive work for young women and men.

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) 2 – ILO’s partner in the promotion of decent and productive work of young people in rural areas – will also participate in the Summit and contribute to the discussions on decent work for youth in rural areas.

The parallel session on the theme “People” will explore innovative ways to expand innovative approaches to skills training, use of culture and media to promote entrepreneurship and to engage marginalized youth. Within this session, the ILO will facilitate the following three workshops:

1. Introduction workshop: People

An interactive panel discussion will introduce the theme. The session takes its starting point in a multitude of initiatives that in innovative ways seek to build human capital in youth: entrepreneurship, creativity, self-confidence, etc. Proceeding from here, the session will ask how such entrepreneurial initiatives, often emerging outside of established structures, can help influence the current institutions and support the emergence of a vibrant new employment generating sector effectively meeting issues such as exclusion and lack of basic life skills.

2. Providing youth with skills for entrepreneurship

This workshop will discuss about the lack of education and training programmes that provide young people with the skills and self confidence needed to develop businesses and employment opportunities. It will highlight successful undertakings to reach out to and scale up educational programmes involving youth-led activities. For these programmes to have large-scale impact, solutions across government, civil society and businesses are needed. The ILO’s contribution will be structured around the theme of youth entrepreneurship and the application of its successful training package “Know About Business” that has reached out to more than 500,000 students.3 An ILO’s expert in entrepreneurship development will introduce the subject and facilitate the discussion focusing on the scarcity of jobs and the importance of entrepreneurship to address the youth employment challenge. Issues relating to the creation of an enabling environment to promote youth entrepreneurship will also be discussed during the workshop.

3. Rework People: Media to drive a culture of entrepreneurship

Traditional information channels have proved insufficient to reach out to and empower young people willing to shape their own future and contribute to sustainable societies through the establishment of their own entrepreneurial activities. New channels, a new language of communication and the involvement of the target groups are necessary. This session will present new approaches to use the media to engage young people, as well as to explore how successful concepts can be replicated. The ILO will present an example of participatory theatre as an instrument to promote an enterprise culture: the PALAMA theatre campaign in Sri Lanka reached more than 280.000 people in rural areas. A dramatic story related to an enterprising culture is told through a theatre enactment. The public is called upon to engage with the actors and set up alternative plots.

1 The programme of the Summit is accessible at http://www.reworktheworld.org/Portals/2/Documents/ReworkProgram.pdf

2 The ILO and the FAO are partners in the promotion of decent and productive work of young people in rural areas. For more information, see the youth employment pages of the joint ILO/FAO website at http://www.fao-ilo.org/fao-ilo-youth/en/

3 See www.knowaboutbusiness.org