Profile of Poonam Ahluwalia published in Education World, January 2003. Education World is a
leading national monthly on human development published from Bangalore, India. URL:
www.educationworldglobal.com
YES Youth Champion
Last September, 1,600 young people, government representatives and development
officials from over 140 countries converged upon the spectacular recently reopened Bibliotheca
Alexandrina (est. 290 BC) in Alexandria, Egypt to address the ballooning problem of global youth
unemployment. Four years in planning, this first ever global Youth Employment Summit (YES)
was a moment of triumph for a "small, dedicated, amazing dream team" of the US-based
Education Development Centre (EDC), a transnational not-for-profit organisation which
orchestrated the summit. As the head of this Boston-based team and executive director of YES,
India-born Poonam Ahluwalia is spearheading an international campaign (with networks in over
80 countries) to develop strategies to promote sustainable livelihood for young people around the
world.
A full-time mother and homemaker until 1996 when she signed up with EDC, Ahluwalia
organised a series of workshops for the centre in Namibia, Peru and India which gave her
"invaluable insights into young people and their urgent, unmet needs". This experience prompted
her to develop the YES concept into a worldwide campaign under the EDC banner. "Youth,
peace building, AIDS and other health issues, water, sanitation and renewable energy. These
issues are interlinked if we adopt a holistic and ecological perspective of development," she says.
"We are examining the interface between these issues and youth employment. That is our goal."
And it's a testimony to EDC -- and Ahluwalia's -- project management skills that by any
yardstick the first ever YES was a spectacular success. Hosted by the Arab Republic of Egypt,
the five-day event was co-chaired by former US president Bill Clinton and Egypt's first lady
Suzanne Mubarak. Moreover on the summit's organising committee were Dr. Ismail Serageldin,
director general Bibliotheca Alexandrina; Jose Maria Figueres, managing director, World
Economic Forum and former president of Costa Rica, and Dr. M.S. Swaminathan, India's World
Food Prize laureate. The summit culminated in the launch of the ambitious Decade Campaign
For Action which aims to create 500 million jobs for young people by 2012, and the signing of the
Alexandria Declaration.
But the real highlight of YES, 2002 according to Ahluwalia was that it provided a unique
opportunity for youth -- who constituted 60 percent of the delegates -- to work collaboratively with
policymakers and researchers. "YES believes in the involvement of youth as proactive planners
and partners, not beneficiaries," says Ahluwalia.
India which has a massive -- and officially disguised -- youth unemployment problem is
high on Ahluwalia's agenda. A regional version of YES is scheduled to be hosted in late 2003 in
Hyderabad by the Andhra Pradesh government. "We have invited 20 SAARC and ASEAN
countries and we expect 600 delegates of whom one-third will be young people," discloses
Ahluwalia.
Under Ahluwalia's stewardship, in addition to working towards attaining its primary
objective of creating productive employment, YES is actively pursuing its objective of
mainstreaming the world's youth by creating opportunities for them to become "architects of their
own future" as per the Alexandria Summit Declaration. Young people the world over have an able
ambassador to champion their cause.
Anupama Sekhar (Alexandria)