Update from Washington: President William J. Clinton, Cherie Blair, Quincy Jones, and others to attend TYO events!

As the new semester kicks off in Nablus, TYO is also busy preparing for a week of events in Washington, DC later this month.

The fun will kick off on Tuesday, October 19, 2010 at Café Milano where advocates of TYO will gather for “A Night for Tomorrow’s Youth.” At the event, sponsored by Raj Fernando, old friends and new will enjoy a night of great conversation, food, and music to benefit TYO.

On Wednesday, October 20, 2010, TYO is pleased to announce that we are cooperating with a panel the New America Foundation and Palestine Note to organize an international policy forum on Women’s Economic Empowerment in the Middle East. In a discussion moderated by Steve Clemons, Director American Strategy Program at New America Foundation and publisher of the Washington Note, the panelists will address related challenges and opportunities from their varied perspectives as academics, government officials, and civil society practitioners. For our contribution, TYO will share lessons learned from our work fostering female entrepreneurs with the Cherie Blair Foundation for Women in Nablus. Held at the New America Foundation (1899 L Street NW, 4th Floor), this event is open to the public. Please monitor the TYO blog and the New America Foundation’s event calendar for details.

Following the panel discussion, TYO will participate in a Salon dinner hosted by Franco Nuschese and a moderated by Steve Clemons that will bring together the panelists, honored guest, Cherie Blair, and top policy and media personalities for a high level, open format discussion on the same topic.

This exciting week of events will culminate on Thursday, October 21, with Tomorrow’s Youth Organization’s First Ever Gala! The Gala, held at the Ritz-Carlton, will celebrate the work of Tomorrow’s Youth Organization, highlighting successes from the past three years in Nablus and upcoming expansion to Lebanon and Cairo. We are thrilled to announce that will honor attendees President William J. Clinton and Cherie Blair for their inspiring work on behalf of women and children worldwide. We also look forward to hosting a diverse and dynamic group of supporters and advocates from the business, development, education, and policy communities from the United States, Europe, Middle East and beyond.

Stay tuned to the TYO blog and Twitter feed for news and updates as we move closer to our debut in Washington!

For media inquiries please contact: Andrea Smith at 703-893-1143 or andrea@tomorrowsyouth.org .

Mobile solutions for Arab Women Entrepreneurs

TYO is thrilled about our new three-way Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) commitment with long-time partners, the Cherie Blair Foundation for Women and SoukTel. We will expand our work with each organization and coordinate efforts in order to offer women entrepreneurs cutting-edge mobile technologies to advance the launch and take-off of their businesses.

Specifically, our 2010 CGI Commitment to Action has two components:

1. Distribution lists will be used by TYO and other partners to share useful information with the women in our entrepreneurship programs including business tips, financial management advice and also knowledge related to women’s health, motherhood and personal development. Once they launch their businesses, we will help the same entrepreneurs develop their own distribution lists so that they can publicize their business and send potential clients promotions by SMS.
2. SoukTel will build a closed network of entrepreneurs from our joint projects with the Cherie Blair Foundation for Women as well as mentors. Through this mobile phone network, participants will have real-time and low-cost access to knowledge and advice by sending a question via SMS to the entire group, and receiving replies for free directly on their mobile handset.

Mrs. Blair and Mohammad Kilany of SoukTel spoke on a CGI panel about innovative mobile solutions last week (see above), where our innovative initiative was received with great enthusiasm by fellow panelists and audience members. In particular, the partnership’s ability and commitment to address women’s comprehensive needs as businesspeople, individuals and parents was recognized as having great potential for impact and sustainable social change. Stay tuned for our CGI progress reports through the year!

Hani Masri at Clinton Global Initiative planning retreat

TYO founder, Hani Masri, attended a Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) strategic planning retreat with other global leaders (including Jennifer Buffett of the Novo Foundation, above) to prepare for the annual CGI meeting in September. Participants analyze pressing global challenges, discuss effective solutions, and build partnerships that enable them to create positive social change.

President Clinton endorses TYO’s women’s entrepreneurialism initiative

Following our fabulous experience at CGI 2009 in New York last month, we were happy to hear from the CGI folks again today! They have made available an official seal of approval for all Commitment Makers in good standing (at left). They’ll also send a certificate signed by President Clinton that we will proudly display in the entrance of our Nablus Center, next to our other commitment certificate from CGI 2007!

In the meantime, we can confidently say that our commitment is in very good standing – we’re interviewing for Project Managers on Wednesday for the women’s economic empowerment initiative that we’ve developed in cooperation with the Cherie Blair Foundation for Women. The Small Enterprise Center of Ramallah is the local technical partner, and has generously agreed to help out from the very first stages of project development and recruitment.

Another great development on this front this week was learning of the Entrepreneurial Finance Lab within Harvard’s Center for International Development from Henriette Kolb, Director of the Cherie Blair Foundation for Women. The team at Harvard is studying ways to remedy the under-utilized economic potential of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in developing countries. This group at Harvard, as well as Mrs. Blair and her Foundation, see SMEs as an essential ingredient for fighting poverty, in different ways from microfinance initiaitives or global expansion of Fortune 500 companies. Harvard’s site provides a comprehensive and lucid description of the issue, as well as innovative and compelling solutions that they are developing, including using psychometric tests to evaluate loan applications!

Come visit us in Nablus to see the CGI certificates in person, and more importantly, check out this exciting new project to promote women as innovative and potent economic engines in their community!

Mrs. Cherie Blair talks about our Partnership

Mrs. Cherie Blair, Founder of the Cherie Blair Foundation for Women is interviewed by Steve Clemons of the New America Foundation and Washington Note at the Clinton Global Initiative 2009 in New York. She addresses the issue of women’s economic empowerment in the West Bank, and a new initiative that her Foundation is pursuing in partnership with Tomorrow’s Youth Organization, which was founded by fellow CGI member Hani Masri.

TYO at Clinton Global Initiative 2009

TYO’s second experience at the Clinton Global Initiative in New York was even more productive than the first! Not only did we have huge progress to report on our first commitment, we announced an exciting new commitment in cooperation with the Cherie Blair Foundation for Women. We are eager to share our experience with you – for a more complete overview of panels and working sessions, check out our Twitter feed from last week! In the meantime, here are some highlights.

President Obama’s made for a great opening, but the best part of the conference for us was the focus on Girls and Women, which began with dinner that evening. The speakers were great, as well as tablemates, including partner, Henriette Kolb (Director of the Cherie Blair Foundation for Women), inspiring champion of businesswomen in Cameroon Kah Walla, and a Colombian champion of early childhood education.

Hani & Henriette

After an evening on the town, we were up early on Wednesday for the plenary on Girls and Women during which Maria Eitel introduced our new commitment. See Henriette and TYO founder, Hani Masri, on stage live or just a snapshot! A great discussion followed – watch the whole video for the hope-inspiring consensus among these in-the-know folks that we may be on the verge of a tipping point regarding the treatment of and investment in girls and women, pointed out by Melanne Verveer.

CGI staff did an awesome job of organizing Action Networks throughout the conference in order to facilitate more concentrated discussion among members with shared interests. Both the Women’s Empowerment and Investing in Girls sessions were enlightening and inspiring. Perhaps one of the most valuable aspects of participating in CGI is being exposed to the caliber of work that is being done in each field represented. One cannot help but come away energized and motivated to learn from the best.

Thursday was no less exciting for TYO. We met up with Cherie Blair and Henriette in time for a Human Capital panel about the twenty-first century workforce, after which, we were to sign the legal agreement to formalize our cooperation. The panel was expertly moderated by Gwen Ifill, and included notable speakers like Quincy Jones, Luis Moreno and John Hope Bryant. The panel embodied CGI’s pervasive feeling of being among friends. Moreno, President of the Inter American Development Bank, knew of our Nablus project, which he cited in his comments. Ifill later cold-called Cherie Blair to talk a bit about our project, which reflects the meeting’s focus on women and girls as well as the strategic Middle East region. Mrs. Blair presented an impressively eloquent overview of the project, her visit to Nablus last May, and her commitment to women’s economic empowerment. We’ll share the video here as soon as we get it from CGI’s media office.

Thursday night’s awards dinner was dynamic, authentic and truly heartwarming, from Usher to President Kagame to Ben Stiller to Dr. Rola Dashti to Quincy Jones to Ruchira Gupta!

Finally, the last day was no less exhilarating for TYO: the gorgeous video produced by Students of the World aired in two breakout sessions. And as well as wrapping up the week’s events eloquently as ever, President Clinton commended the work that we are doing with the Cherie Blair Foundation for Women, and quoted Cherie Blair:

access to finance should be viewed as a human right as much as education and health if you really want to elevate the status of women in the world.

What a week! Now, back to work – we have a lot to live up to!

CGI 2009, Day 1

It has been a crazy first day at CGI – some familiar faces from last year, great energy, awesome kick off to focus on girls & women, of course highlights of Bill & Barack, and exciting preparation for our new 2009 Commitment (news coming tomorrow!). Unfortunately, I’m not getting service in the plenary room (maybe it was Obama’s security today – will try again tomorrow), so I wasn’t able to update from the Opening. But I jotted down some highlights the old school way that I share below. The Girls & Women dinner tonight was great, topped off by the star performer by far: Ann Cotton of Camfed. I did manage to tweet highlights of that session.

After Matt Damon announced a new commitment for water.org, a panel of 4 spoke, moderated by President Clinton. The Turkish CEO of Coca Cola talked about their micro-distribution program for women, which seems pretty great, as well as their efforts to become water neutral by 2020. He also announced a new bottle that they plan to produce 7 million of in 2010, which is made 30% of plant (sugar cane) products, and is 100% recyclable. President Clinton pointed out the significance of these efforts since 80% of the casualties in the world related to water issues are children under 5 years of age.

While waiting for Obama to navigate New York traffic, President Clinton cited a phrase coined by George W. Bush, that the President is really the ‘decider-in-chief’. He added that most decisions are not really to be made, but simply signed off on after reading a one-page memo. Just those decisions that are really ‘horrible’ are left to the Decider-in-Chief. Clinton’s warm intelligence and dedication were as evident as ever during the session. He pointed out the value of having a ‘decider-in-chief’ and Secretary of State with long backgrounds in the NGO world, where there is no choice but to take action.

When Obama did arrive, he had several good points to make, building on this NGO experience as a community organizer in Chicago, which he said taught him that real progress doesn’t come from the top down, but from the bottom up. He added that ‘to bring real change, you have to step up, you have to serve,’ and echoed this call to action several times throughout his address.

He suggested that this transformative moment in our twenty-first century interconnected world offers both great promise and great peril, which calls for a new spirit of global partnership. He commended the Clinton Global Initiative for embodying and facilitating exactly such a spirit, and acknowledged that his administration aspires to the same.

President Obama acknowledged having, ‘with friends from across the Muslim world, launched new beginnings based on mutual interests and mutual respect.’ He also alluded to a new initiative of Secretary Clinton’s that will engage businesses, non-profit organizations and faith groups – will listen for more details in coming days.

The President concluded by suggesting that ‘we can leave this world even better, even more hopeful than we found it,’ perhaps trying to summon some of the original hope inspired by his candidacy just a year ago.

Overall, the address was certainly eloquent and positive, but to me, the challenge of our times was tangible. Nonetheless, the stage was set for what I hope will be an educational and productive three days!

We start early tomorrow morning – downstairs at 8 am, but the result will be more than worth it. Stay tuned for more details and photos here tomorrow!

Clinton Global Initiative 2009

I’ve just arrived in New York for the Fifth Annual Clinton Global Initiative, TYO’s second CGI conference. Although the events don’t officially begin until Tuesday afternoon, the buzz is already tangible! The UN General Assembly also opens tomorrow, so the city is officially overflowing with official visitors.

In its fifth year, CGI seems to be making a lot of changes for the better, toward a greater focus on concrete action and feasible commitments rather than high-profile talking sessions. We are extremely excited for this year’s Action Networks on Investing in Girls and Empowering Women, both topics that are so essential to TYO’s work. They also provide an ideal platform to announce an exciting new project that we have made our Commitment to Action for 2009. Keep your eyes out for full details here in the coming days…

Another highlight of CGI 2009 for TYO will be the broadcast of the video produced by the New York Students of the World team in Nablus in June 2009. We will also post the video here as soon as its available on the web!

Finally, an important aspect of CGI is always the networking: taking advantage of the knowledge and willingness of CGI staff to help members (philanthropists, practitioners, and private sector representatives) connect with each other according to their shared passions and complementary resources. President Obama has confirmed his attendance at Tuesday afternoon’s plenary, which should set an extremely positive tone for the event.

I’ll be tweeting as much as I can about the event and the working sessions – follow along and let me know what you think along the way: http://twitter.com/tomorrowsyouth .