INTERNATIONAL CHILD AND YOUTH CARE NETWORK

13 SEPTEMBER 2002
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Egypt Hosts Youth Summit on Work

Twenty-year old Shady Shafik came from Cairo to learn more about setting up an employment center. Maikel Lieuw Kie Song, an entrepreneur in South Africa, wants to explain how bikes can change the world, or at least one corner of it.

The Youth Employment Summit, in its third day Monday in the Mediterranean port city of Alexandria, is not your typical international problem-solving gathering. "The idea is to motivate groups into action, to motivate each other," said Solene Favre, 25, a French health education specialist who came to meet young people to expand an AIDS awareness radio program.

Instead of the high-powered delegates in business suits, the summit attracted about 1,000 people in their twenties and thirties, mingling in jeans and bright African robes.

"We are trying to find ways by which every group will find the best solutions for themselves," said Ismail Serageldin, a former World Bank vice president and the conference host.

About 500 officials, businesspeople and social workers joined the young delegates to discuss ensuring that 1 billion people between 15 and 24 have the means to provide for themselves. By the end of the summit Wednesday, they hope to draft a 10-year plan for employing 500 million young people.

Most of those unemployed youth are in developing countries, home to 85 percent of the world's total youth population. In eight years, about 700 million youth are expected to enter the labor market in these countries, according to the International Labor Organization.

Song, the entrepreneur in South Africa, looked down-to-earth in a bright red T-shirt. He punctuated his talk with giggles Sunday, betraying his excitement at being recognized for his ideas. The 30-year-old from Suriname now living in South Africa won a $1,000 innovative-entrepreneurs prize for Afribike, a network of shops in rural Africa that sell mostly used bikes donated by Europeans and Americans and train local people to maintain them.

Song hopes the program will make it easier for people in rural areas to get around.

Shafik says he wants ideas, but worries special conditions in Egypt will make it hard to apply others' experiences. Starting a new business in Egypt doesn't just require money and a good plan, the pharmaceutical student said. "You have to know people in high places," he said. "It is not just about employment ... the old generation have to also make room for us."

Ali Raza Khan, in his late twenties, is looking for funding for his training project for disadvantaged youth in Pakistan. For Khan, the challenge is retraining young people who have passed though an "old education system" that doesn't provide needed market skills.

"It isn't just an issue of employment. It is also the norms and values in society. There are more restrictions" in Pakistan, Khan said.
 

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