Dumisani Nyoni and I co-facilitated a World Cafe session on the theme of Community Building at the Youth Employment Summit meeting in Alexandria. Here are the notes from our session:

• Youth exchange experience, give and take relationship, consistent communication, time to evaluate, adapt to new needs, more action/results-oriented, internal capacity-building
• Goals of YES can be improved through information sharing beyond the community. Have an online exchange program of best practices and stories
• Strengthening communication channels
• Translation into different languages
• Updating information from different regions
• Scholarships and comprehensive training
• Country internship programs
• Entrepreneur funds
• What is the added value of YES working from a civil society – important for YES to position itself through other initiatives such as the ILO initiative (YEN), how can YES add value to YEN
• YES creates an in-country process to help build skills and understanding for youth access employment and jobs
• Need for a political agenda – to act as a pressure unit when it comes to policy setting
• Sharing the ideas
• Regular communication
• Assistance of country networks
• Coordinate promotion of social/economic/environmental
• Information exchange and human resource exchange between countries
• Developing a culture of diversity and respect
• Joint activities and projects
• Stronger relations between countries
• Ways to improve capacity of network leaders
• Ethics issues
• Donor information
• Give community the opportunity to think and nurture creative ideas
• Respect for the culture to have sustainable development
• Clear link for understanding needs of the community
• Bringing young people in as partners, getting youth more say in matters and opening opportunities
• Creating rural livelihoods
• Build their confidence
• Youth-to-youth markets
• Process showed us that we are already achieving many things that we need to do
• Try to remove hatred and enemy
• Making sure that we are collaborating
• When there are weaknesses – find tools to turn them into strengths
• Process showed how great of a community this is
• The challenge is not the future – the challenge is today
• Meeting frequently – even discussions over the internet to feel more connected to each other
• Should be a leader to any family – must have good leadership skills
• We just need to continue what we do
• Clearly defining our aims and goals
• Having a plan of approach and action -- Engaging the youth in the process
• Technology could play a vital role
• Fostering multi-sectoral collaboration
• Knowledge sharing
• We need trust, commitment, resources, rules, to be flexible, mutual understanding, to have an effective and efficient structure
• For leadership to be good at building capacities
• Adding something to our names (YES)