• HIV/AIDS is decimating the knowledge and skill base in many communities, leaving young entrepreneurs without traditional mentorship and apprenticeship opportunities.  The number of youth-headed households and orphans is steadily increasing. The majority of those infected by HIV/AIDS is under 25.
• Conflict and war are similarly disrupting formal and traditional learning systems, and are causing high numbers of youth-headed households and orphaned children.  In addition, unemployed youth are increasingly vulnerable to recruitment into armies and terrorist movements.
• In many rural and poverty-stricken areas, youth with limited opportunities are drawn into quick-return, environmentally-destructive activities, such as charcoal burning or forest clearing in order to find new land to farm.
• In urban areas, youth who have grown up in economically-depressed households or as homeless children often resort to illegal entrepreneurial activities, such as drug trading, theft, human trafficking, and violent crime. Many are also susceptible to becoming involved in youth gangs. 
• Young women, with few economic alternatives, are vulnerable to sexual exploitation, human trafficking and early pregnancy.
• Youth unemployment is on the rise. In many parts of the world, youth are about 3 times as likely as adults to be unemployed. The ILO estimates that at least 400 million new jobs will have to be created to take advantage of the productive potential of today’s youth population.

The Global Youth Enterprise Conference will focus on programs and projects that have achieved or are achieving results, and methodologies and strategies that are being used to monitor and evaluate these initiatives, with an eye towards achieving sustainability and scale, where appropriate. The program was developed after compiling input and feedback from 2007 Global Youth Microenterprise Conference participants, members of the Advisory Committee, and other interested organizations and individuals around the world. This event is intended to be community-driven to help ensure the needs, questions, and interests that members of this growing community have are addressed. Conference participants will engage in a lively exchange and a critical analysis of initiatives and approaches that have worked well, and those that have to be adapted or discarded. It will provide participants with multiple opportunities to share information and ideas for moving the field forward.

Making Cents International invites members of all sectors to participate in this learning event and:

* Network face-to-face with the people whose proactive work, actionable ideas, and cross-sectoral innovative tools and strategies are revolutionizing the lives of youth entrepreneurs, while building their employability, entrepreneurship, life, and financial skills.
* Explore strategies to successfully partner with the private sector, including multinational corporations, small businesses and microfinance institutions.
* Learn from innovators who have creatively developed livelihoods programs to reach vulnerable youth in challenging environments, and from others who have effectively placed themselves at the intersection of health and enterprise development for youth.
* Take advantage of the many opportunities built into the program to engage with policymakers, youth, leaders of the private sector, and other professionals who are similarly committed to reducing the poverty, vulnerability, and unemployment that plagues many of the world's youth.
* Learn how organizations are mainstreaming entrepreneurship and financial education into school systems.
* Display their products and shared their organization's best practices in the exhibits hall.
* Demonstrate their leadership by sponsoring this unique event.

"This conference is an important step in fostering the emerging field of youth enterprise—creating access to capital and business development opportunities for young people—much like what has been accomplished successfully for women and the poor over the last 30 years. We believe given the right access points, the right financial incentives, the right support, the right encouragement, and the right coaching and mentoring, millions of young people can successfully rise to the challenges of entrepreneurship and self-employment.”

Rick Little, President and CEO of the ImagineNations Group