Youth Economic Opportunities Conference: Keynote speakers stress need to prioritize youth

Insights from the 2012 Youth Economic Opportunities Conference

September 11-13, 2012 | Washington, DC

The Global Youth Economic Opportunities Conference featured keynote presentations from Jose Manuel Salazar of ILO, Gabriele Zedimayer of Hewlett-Packard, and Miguel Angel Carreón of the Mexican Institute of Youth. The keynote speakers emphasized the need for policies that focus on youth, particularly around education, employment, and financial inclusion. Read highlights from each keynote below.

Keynote Address by Jose Manuel Salazar, ILO

Jose Manuel Salazar kicked off the first of three conference keynote addresses by stressing that the youth employment crisis is a major focus for ILO. In fact, at its 101st International Labour Conference in June, the ILO adopted a resolution “calling for immediate, targeted and renewed action to tackle” the crisis. “Globally, youth unemployment is reaching unprecedented rates,” cautioned Salazar. Even those who do work are still not earning enough—they are in temporary or part-time employment or working in the informal market. So Salazar is also concerned about the quality of work opportunities available to youth. “High social and economic costs [associated with youth unemployment] threaten the very fabric of society,” he warned.

The ILO is concerned over the “lost generation” based on recent youth unemployment forecasts driven by global economic slow-down and sharp decline in trade. But Salazar didn’t dwell on the negative. Global numbers can’t be taken as a “prophesy of doom,” he said, although there are still “heavy clouds on the horizon.” He stated that the right policies and programs can make a major impact for millions.

Returning to the topic of June’s International Labour Conference, Salazar identified the issues/barriers that seemed to come up again and again. Among the several he listed were:

• Dependence on extractive industries is a “killer of opportunities.”
• There is a critical skills miss-match between what youth have and what employers are looking for, often due to a lack of information services that connect the two.
• There is an experience paradox: youth can't get jobs without experience but can't get experience without working.
• The lack of entrepreneurship infrastructure (investors, training, incubators, technology) is a critical barrier.
• Youth want to be included in policies that affect them. As Salazar put it, “Youth are part of the solution!”

Salazar concluded by talking about factors that will help in dealing with the “creative destruction” that is inevitable with economic growth and development: technology, education and training, social protection policies, and the South-South dialogue. He also stressed that when addressing macroeconomic and sectoral policies, youth can’t be sacrificed to fiscal conservatism. Youth must be prioritized.

Keynote Address by Gabriele Zedimayer, Hewlett-Packard

In a focus on education, training, and learning, Gabriele Zedimayer began her keynote remarks by asking “How can we bring the best in kids out?” How can we reshape education and bring it to more kids in the world? Her answer: we all have a role to play. Partnerships are the key! Technology is also critical because it is an enabler and the platform. However, Zedimayer echoed Fiona Macaulay’s earlier remarks, cautioning that “it’s all about how we use technology.” But the reality is that we are at an inflection point: mobile technology is nearly ubiquitous.

Circling back to education, Zedimayer—who is HP’s Vice President for Sustainability and Social Innovation—spoke about how “we need people who can work across borders, across countries, that can invent new jobs.” Many children in school now will work in jobs that don’t even exist today, so entrepreneurial skills are critical. Many HP education initiatives help children to use technology to develop real-world entrepreneurship skills. Putting curricula on the cloud also helps with accessibility, but this is part of a larger emphasis that HP places on supporting accessible and available online learning. For example, HP supports the University of the People online programs, providing scholarships for 100 women and a connection with a woman at HP who can serve as a mentor/coach. HP is also hard at work digitizing text books and creating learning platforms that integrate multimedia. Here’s a short video that Zedimayer showed in illustration of HP’s work:

HP is also collaborating with 6 institutes and universities in a consortium (along with 200 additional universities) to imagine the future of education. HP Virtual Labs are one an example. The HP Virtual Lab is an internet-accessible, automated training environment that provides students with remote “hands on” access to real equipment from anywhere in the world.

But, Zedimayer said, “what will really spell out success is when we can get to the individual learning capabilities of children.” That’s why HP is creating strengths identification tests and software that can individualize assignments and activities to each student.

“It’s time to be optimistic, it’s time to come together and make all of these things happen.”

Keynote Address by Miguel Angel Carreón, Mexican Institute of Youth

In his 20s and in charge of Mexico’s youth policy, Miguel Angel Carreón brought an interesting perspective to the conference’s opening plenary. Carreón likes to call his generation the “Generation of Opportunity.” It’s fitting since he’s been given a big task by President Felipe Calderón—figuring out “how to commit youth to be more productive.” His answers: employment, education, and financial inclusion.

In his role working with youth to expand their economic opportunities in Mexico, Carreón has seen first-hand the market failures that stand in the way. He said that while it is true that youth lack information about where and how to find a good job, part of the problem is also too much information. They are inundated by so much information these days that they can’t discriminate between good quality information and spam. Part of the message that needs to be simplified is the exact skills that employers are looking for. On this point, there also needs to be much stronger communication between employers and academic institutions as there is currently a gap between graduation-readiness and work-readiness. Internships can also help with this point, Carreón said. Another challenge is that rigid labor laws in Mexico don’t allow for enough job flexibility, for example, for part time or hourly work. This was a point echoed by many other presenters from different countries throughout the conference.

The final crucial obstacle that Carreón mentioned was the lack of financial literacy, inclusion, and saving culture for and by youth. He walked the audience through diagram that drew connections between youth financial exclusion and systemic poverty. That is why his team is working on creating financial incentives to encourage good behavior, like saving, among Mexico’s youth. As part of this initiative, the Mexican Institute of Youth is working with banks to evolve from a client framework toward a more social perspective of “joining” with youth in a kind of partnership in all their lifelong financial decisions. Carreón sees this as critical to improving the level of trust that Mexican youth have in financial institutions.

Lastly, Carreón spoke about the Institute’s focus on inclusive education and their desire to engage marginalized populations like young women who are at home with their children, people in prison, and people with disabilities. Many would say that these people aren’t productive, he said, but that isn’t always true. There is more we can do with them.