Youth

With young people leading democratic reform efforts around the world, the Center for International Private Enterprise’s (CIPE) youth programming seeks to empower and engage young people as the political and business leaders of tomorrow. Youth are all too often excluded from political and economic policymaking, even though their engagement is vital in formulating effective public policy.

Without access to venues for voicing their opinion, strikes and street protests become the only opportunity for young people to be heard. For progress and reform to take hold, young people must play an active role in advancing democratic and market-oriented reform. Youth in many countries are discouraged and sometimes prohibited from expressing their own views and opinions, preventing them from contributing to the necessary reforms that could strengthen their voices, both inside and beyond the private sector.

To achieve progress, education must be accompanied by opportunity. Entrepreneurship is one key access point to policymaking for many of the youth in developing countries. Developing the entrepreneurial potential of youth can help create alternatives to state employment, while teaching the young people the values of self-initiative and self-dependency. Further, CIPE programs build around the idea that to truly harness the relationship between entrepreneurship and society, youth must be well-integrated into both local and national policymaking strategy.