Global Youth Speak Forum Report | February 2015 - Cambodia | Enabling Cross-Sector Collaboration

Enabling Cross-Sector Collaboration

YouthSpeak Forum | Cambodia

February 16, 2015

“In order to create a world that is more inclusive and sustainable, we must commit to enabling cross-sector collaboration. We are often working towards similar goals without the awareness that we are. We must collaborate instead of competing and bring different stakeholders together and unite on enabling large-scale positive change.

Vinícius Tsugue

President of AIESEC International

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Forum Concept

A Focus on Ac/onable Outcomes for Impact

The YouthSpeak Forum is a premier event powered by AIESEC that brings together both young and senior leaders to form a diverse crosssector, multi-generational space for inspiring conversations around pressing global issues, and convert youth opinion into real world impact.

Unlike most forums, YouthSpeak dedicates action spaces that follow the conversations, rather than just talking about pressing social issues, we discover solutions to them in the Forum.

The forum aims to create an environment where people from diverse backgrounds can crosspollinate ideas, share insights, and gain new perspectives to create actionable outcomes to move the world forward.

The Forum serves as a space to convene thoughts, ideas and datadriven insights to create a space where delegates are aligned on a common purpose. From there, we enable young people and leaders to collaborate together in creating initiatives and projects that can be taken outside of the Forum to create real-world impact.

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Why Collabora/on?

A focus on cross-sector collaboration: Every organization has its strengths and weaknesses, and we must bring the best out of everyone to the table.

The challenges we face today as humanity require teamwork and a better understanding of our individual contributions.

Cross-sector collaboration means that government, business and the third sector must engage together across generations to enable sustainable impact to happen. Through collaboration, we can combine resources and different strengths to tackle some of the most pressing challenges we face today.

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INSPIRE One of the challenges to crea/ng large-­‐ scale impact is the common alignment between stakeholders. Through the YouthSpeak and external data, we seek to align stakeholders not only through opinions, but quan/ta/ve data that focuses the discussion. At our Forums, seek to bring diverse opinion and thought leaders to spark new insights to help guide our delegates through a common journey that is not just informa/onal, but engages both logically and emo/onally.

ENGAGE In the engage phase, delegates and leaders are given the chance to group together and share their insights from the inspire phase.

From here, par/cipants can turn their big ideas into more concrete forms that enable others to understand and engage upon them. By the end of this phase, delegates should have ac/onable plans that enable them to pitch and share their ideas with others.

ACT With all the inspira/on and engagement now put into more concrete formats, the ac/on space enables par/cipants to pitch their ideas and rally excitement and momentum for their ideas. Diverse stakeholders can select ideas they wish to take forward and leverage the AIESEC plaLorm and external resources to make it happen. By the end of the Forum, you should have turned raw ideas into ac/onable outcomes.

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“We need the youth to be aligned, be engaged and collaborative; we should not work for the youth, we should work with the youth.”

Ahmad Alhendawi United Nations

Secretary-General's Envoy on Youth

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Keynote United Na*ons & AIESEC

The United Nations has been working closely together with AIESEC and in the past year we have started a new path of collaboration.

Ahmad Alhendawi is the United Nation’s Secretary-General’s Envoy on Youth, where he is mandated with the task of bringing the voices of young people to the United Nations System.

He joined us virtually on a Skype call to jumpstart our discussion on Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’S) that will be launched as the Millennium Development Goals finish this year.

His key message centred around the importance of youth inclusion and participation on the United Nations post-2015 process, to ensure more effective implementation of the goals that will shape the next 15 years of global development.

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The Challenges to Cross-­‐Sector Collabora/on A panel on cross-sector collaboration featured leaders business and third sector organizations to discuss the major challenges of cross-sector collaboration and how to make it work.

Featuring leaders from organizations such as Global Sustainability Foundation, ThinkYoung, AIESEC, PwC, International SOS, Euromoney, and Deutsche Post DHL.

Key Takeaways Aligning the Purpose One of the main challenges for crosssector collaboration is creating a common purpose. Every individual and organization has their own end goals and if these goals are not aligned by a common purpose, problems will arise. An important aspect of alignment is the timing of the collaboration; knowing to approach a particular individual or organization when they have both something to contribute, and something to gain from the collaboration.

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Understanding Stakeholders Understanding all the stakeholders, from what they want to how their organization is run, will lead to more sustainable collaborations. All partners must gain something from the collaboration to ensure a common commitment and engagement throughout the process.

Aligning ideas, and understanding how to take advantage of different areas of expertise that will help maximize the overall outcomes. There is a need to respect different players involved.

Learn to adapt The ability to adapt to specific sectors or organizations is another key challenge.

Different sectors and organizations have different rules and norms. In order to effectively leverage each organization’s area of expertise and utilize their resources towards a common agenda, we need to learn to adapt and employ diplomacy and understanding rather than control; we need to have faith in the ability of each stakeholder to do their part.

Transparency Being transparent from the beginning , with clear goals and agendas, can lead to better results due to greater efficiency and effectiveness. Generation Y is more likely to research organizations online to fi n d p r o s p e c t i v e c o l l a b o r a t o r s .

Organizations need to take a more transparent approach in communicating their values, initiatives, and plans for the future through online channels so Generation Y can present more aligned solutions that meet the initial desired outcomes.

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Megatrends affec/ng the Talent Market TECHNOLOGY As the world becomes more technologically integrated, an increase in the need for flexibility in the workplace has also raised. It also entails a need for more specific and specialized skill sets for the technology industry from the talent market.

DIVERSITY Increasing global understanding and adaptability has led to expats moving to investment hubs and also horizontal job switching.

ENTREPRENEURIAL Younger decision makers have disruptive and innovative business models that are presenting an opportunity to rethink traditional approaches to talent management models.

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The impact of digital re-­‐imagina/on to society The session highlighted the evolution of impact that technology has had on the world, by connecting more people faster and easier.

Focused on how technology is impacting the society in India, delegates created working groups for a specific case in the banking & telecommunication sector.

By engaging young people on issues like technology and connecting its impact on people, young people are better able to envision the role of technology in our everyday lives.

Cross-­‐Sector Collabora/on with the Financial Industry

“Finance needs socially conscious and entrepreneurial collaboration, and it’s up to our generation to understand it and shape it for the better.”

Katrina Oropel,

Euromoney Conferences- Asia

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Ac/on Spaces 12

Crea*ng ac*on across genera*ons

Together with companies and organiza/ons, delegates created projects and ideas that will be implemented within the next few months with the help of the resources of our partners and guests.

The 200 young leaders pitched their ideas to invited businesses, organiza/ons and guests.

As an outcome they will get a chance to realize their projects that will impact their local environment in a posi/ve way.

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AIESEC in Egypt and United Nations Development Program The project involves the AIESEC Global Citizen Volunteering Programme by having student ambassadors as volunteer interns to UNDP projects across Egypt that are aligned to the Millennium Development Goals (MDG’s) of the UN.

How are they showcasing crosssector collaboration?

AIESEC in Egypt is working alongside the United Nations Development Program to bring in corporate CSR to work with the government and NGO’s to come up with projects that are aligned to the Social Development Goals.

Challenges they are facing

Timeline

Trying to align the AIESEC exchange program to the projects being created, as the agenda of the program is already identified with the focus on MDG issues.

AIESEC in Egypt and the UNDP is projected to have the collaboration completed in time for Egypt summer peak of exchanges between June and September.

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AIESEC in the Philippines and AIESEC in Vietnam and Asia Society for Social Improvement and Sustainable Transformation (ASSIST) The project entails AIESEC exchanges, project creation, and media outreach through ASSIST, the Asian NGO magazine. AIESEC in the Philippines has partnered with ASSIST for the Global Internship Program.

This year, the partnership has increased to reaching out to AIESEC in Vietnam to also begin taking in the Global Talent Program. ASSIST with Asian NGO and AIESEC in the Philippines has collaborative to create a youth speak corner in the magazine to showcase our projects and impact.

Also a current project in making publishing material of project impact stories and creating an “Engaging with Youth” NGO booklet to support NGO’s on how they can collaborate with youth.

AIESEC in the Philippines will collaborate by bringing in AIESEC volunteer interns to help spread awareness and the Local Committees will be challenged to create student-led projects to increase impact and reach.

Challenges they are facing

Timeline

Creating the right space for the Local Committees to collaborate with ASSIST to come out with sustainable projects for the movement.

An ambassador program to begin the partnership is set to begin at the beginning of April with project launches to begin in June and July.

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Besides the AIESEC exchanges, AIESEC in the Philippines is now partnered with ASSIST regarding a social movement and campaign called, Digi Bayanihan, which was initiated by a multi-sectoral group of digital literacy champions to bring together all types of initiatives, big or small, to create bigger impact and to reach farther the importance of digital literacy.

SPEAKERS OF YOUTHSPEAK FORUM

Eliane Sussman Director of Programming at Global Sustainability Foundation

Andrea Gerosa Founder and CEO at Think Young

Ahmad Alhendawi United Nations Secretary General’s Special Envoy on Youth

Philip Sladdin Global Information leader and Global AIESEC Champion at PwC

Marsha Larned Institutional Investor Forums – Asia at Euromoney

PARTNERS OF YOUTHSPEAK FORUM

ORGANIZERS OF YOUTHSPEAK FORUM

Gordon Ching Global VP Digital Marketing gordonc@ai.aiesec.org

Tala Mansi Global Partnerships Manager & Event Strategist talam@ai.aiesec.org

Karolina Piotrowska Global VP Public Relations & Event Strategist karolinap@ai.aiesec.org

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aiesec.org/youthspeak

YouthSpeak Forum | Cambodia