International Business Leaders Forum - IBLF

"Promoting responsible business leadership and partnerships for sustainable international development"
The moto from the website of IBLF. With a realization that in todays economy social issues are business issues IBLF strives to work with governments, businesses, international agencies and other stakeholders to bridge the gap between communities and businesses. Such a bridging can only be done by creating a new creed of young entrepreneurs and that is one of their focus areas. Having a Middle East and North Africa(MENA) operation they have been active in this region.

Across all of IBLF's activities are three consistent themes - leadership, capacity building and partnerships. Here are the development programs under IBLF

Of these the two that specifically caught my attention were:

The Youth Career Iniative and the Youth Business International.

"There are few challenges today more pressing than the need to create meaningful employment and enterprise opportunities for young people. Developing countries are characterised by youthful and fast-growing populations, and idle or disengaged young people can all too easily fall victim to extremism.
In the Middle East and North Africa region for example, which faces many risks of conflict and extremism 60 percent of the population is under the age of 24 and faces bleak employment prospects. Some 100 million jobs have to be created in the next 20 years just to absorb new entrants to the job market and another 20 million to reduce the present level of unemployment.
The employment gap can only be filled through partnerships between the private sector, public authorities, NGOs and communities which I believe are all too often overlooked, underestimated or seen as peripheral to the task of development." HRH The Prince of Wales.