Hundreds of delegates from around the world are convening at the third Youth Employment Summit (YES) in Mexico this week. The Summit will assess global progress on youth employment issues and offer a forum where innovative policies, practices, and ideas can be shared and used for initiating committed action.

The gathering, hosted by the Mexican Government, follows an international summit in Alexandria, Egypt (2002) and a regional summit in Hyderabad, India (2003). The YES campaign, managed by EDC, is a global, decade-long campaign aimed at building the capacity of young people to create sustainable livelihoods and establishing an entrepreneurial culture where young people will work toward self-employment. The campaign collaborates with governments, businesses, civil groups, and youth groups to alert leaders to the global crisis in youth employment. More than one billion young people are in the labor market today, and many countries around the world are insufficiently prepared to address their needs and the capacity of rural and urban communities to accommodate them, according to EDC’s Poonam Ahluwalia, YES director.

The 2004 Summit will produce a “State of YES Campaign Report 2004” to assess the impact YES has had to date. Other highlights of the Summit include the following:

• Presentations by the YES Country Networks on their achievements over the first two years of the YES Campaign.
• Reports from YES Conferences of Ministers on policies and programs that have been launched since the Alexandria Summit in 2002.
• Progress reports from the Summit delegates on action plans they created at the Alexandria Summit with results of their achievements over a two-year period.

In addition to its comprehensive, action-oriented conferences, YES encourages the formation of YES Country Networks, which now operate in more than 60 counties. The networks bring together youth organizations with governments, NGOs, the private sector, and academic and training institutions to develop programs and policies to provide youth with opportunities for creating livelihoods.