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| YSESD "Demo Day" participants - March 6, 2021 |
With slow economic growth, many countries face the problem of large numbers of youth entering the labor market each year only to find that there are no jobs beyond menial work. This is especially disheartening for youth who have received a college degree but cannot use the skills they learned through their education. For all too many youth, the outcome is feelings of disillusionment and lack of hope in the future.
In countries where youth are a large demographic, in certain cases 70% of the population under age 30, this presents a dangerous situation. Crime, violence, and joining extremist groups present an ongoing threat. What can be done to address the problem of youth who see little opportunity for developing a meaningful career?
Unfortunately, youth continue to be largely ignored by those who rule. Rather than viewing them as important human capital, youth are often viewed with suspicion because they frequently challenge traditional norms and ways of doing things in society. These rulers fail to comprehend that putting youth to work would not only enhance economic growth, but promote greater social and political stability while training the next generation of leaders in all areas of society at the same time.
The lack of opportunities available to youth in LDCs, and the potential problems which lack of hope in the future can produce, are key reasons why a group of colleagues and I established the Youth, Social Entrepreneurship and Sustainable Development project (YSESD).
The goal of the project is to establish an international network of youth social entrepreneurs who will have access to a “talent platform” where they will be able to exchange ideas about potential start-ups or established social entrepreneurial ventures with colleagues, receive mentoring from successful social entrepreneurs, and pitch their projects to potential investors through “shark tank” style competitions.
With a grant from the Rutgers University Research Council, the project began to take shape in a workshop held at the university’s Eagleton Institute of politics in August 2019. Following the Rutgers workshop, we organized a Core Team to direct the YSESD.
The Core Team is comprised of Dr. Eric Davis, YSESD Director, Dr. Yass Alkafaji, who directs the Iraq Leadership and Public Policy Program (IPLP) and teaches business administration at the American University of Sharjah, Dr. Abid Ali, a social entrepreneurship specialist and engineer at Dataiku and an instructor at the University of Chicago and Northwestern university, and Mr. Berat Kjamili, CEO of migport.com (“migration portal”) which teaches refugees in Turkey how to become successful social entrepreneurs.
In 2020, the YSESD received a grant from the Hollings Center for International Dialogue, which is located in Istanbul and funded by the Office of Economic and Cultural Affairs at the US Department of State. This grant enabled the YSESD to organize a Workshop on promoting youth social entrepreneurship which included a series of 5 sessions that began in December 2020 and ended in the beginning of March 2021.
The YSESD Workshop represents the culmination of Phase 1 of the project. Its purpose was to begin work in 3 countries - Iraq, Pakistan and Turkey - in which the YSESD Core Team has extensive contacts with the goal of developing a pilot project which could later be applied in other regions of the world.
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| YSESD second Workshop session - December 11, 2020 |
The December 2020 through March 2021 Workshop included youth social entrepreneurs from Iraq, Pakistan and Turkey, as well as mentors, social entrepreneurship venture capitalists, and academics interested in the topic of youth and social entrepreneurship. A group of teams were organized around the YSEDS’s 5 thematic foci. Each team concentrated on developing projects aligned with one or more of these themes, since the themes obviously overlap.
It was especially unique and exciting that the Workshop teams include social entrepreneurs and mentors from Iraq, Pakistan and Turkey. The Core Team choose to establish10 Teams which were organized along cross-national lines, and gender balanced. The teams’ organization of was to help the YSESD better assess how youth social entrepreneurs can work together coming from different economic, social and cultural contexts. Thus the goal was to ascertain what types of synergies could be developed using a cross national/cultural social entrepreneurship model instead of a country based one and one with mixed genders.
The youth social entrepreneurs enjoyed meeting their counterparts from other countries. It was also the first time they had the opportunity to share ideas with youth working on social entrepreneurship in other countries. As we had hoped, many participants discovered new ideas and approaches to problems they had experienced with their social entrepreneurial ventures by discussing them with colleagues in other countries.
As the Workshop sessions progressed, participants learned about how to develop and pitch their social entrepreneurial ideas, The business models they used were able to be refined by the mentoring them received from successful social entrepreneurs. Most important of all, they were able to develop projects which could be implemented in the future across national boundaries.
It was especially unique and exciting that the Workshop teams include social entrepreneurs and mentors from Iraq, Pakistan and Turkey. The Core Team choose to establish10 Teams which were organized along cross-national lines, and gender balanced. The teams’ organization of was to help the YSESD better assess how youth social entrepreneurs can work together coming from different economic, social and cultural contexts. Thus the goal was to ascertain what types of synergies could be developed using a cross national/cultural social entrepreneurship model instead of a country based one and one with mixed genders.
The youth social entrepreneurs enjoyed meeting their counterparts from other countries. It was also the first time they had the opportunity to share ideas with youth working on social entrepreneurship in other countries. As we had hoped, many participants discovered new ideas and approaches to problems they had experienced with their social entrepreneurial ventures by discussing them with colleagues in other countries.
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