Concept of

YOUTH AS A GLOBAL BANKING & FINANCIAL RESOURCE 

     The “CNYC – National Youth Empowerment Action Programme”, which was adopted on 12th of August 2001, is being supported by the President of the Republic of Croatia and empowered by USA patented management technology of the Croatian economic scientist Dr. Milan R. Juranovic.

     This technology is a life work of the author who spent more than 40 years in American academic and business environments. It was successfully tested in Youth Enterprise competitions across Europe by Croatian students (1992 – 1995).

     Thereupon we have derived a concept of Youth being a Financial Resource and a Global Banking Potential. In this perspective we count on a close cooperation with croatian management scientist Dr. Milan R. Juranovic, with the support of SAP Solutions.

1.   The unemployed Youth, at a global, regional, national and local level is a respectable labour resource. No only that. YOUTH is a respectable economic, social, political, financial, security, intelligence, and cultural POWER (as the UN Secretary-General Kofi A. Annan said in his “Global Alliance for Youth Employment - Recommendations of the Secretary-General's High-Level Panel on Youth Employment” -“In the next ten years 1.2 billion of young women and men will enter into working age population, the best educated and trained generation of young people ever, a great potential for economic and social development”).

2.    We daily witness the emergence of  new knowledge economies and with its networked societies making of a Global Digital World. We, the Global Youth,  have a deep feeling of being “left behind”, and think that the right time has come for the full development of the youth banking & financial potentials. Let us  create a GLOBAL YOUTH BANKING & FINANCIAL NETWORK (GYBFN)! Only when such a global youth financial potential is widely recognized, can civil youth banking institutions be established on national, regional and global levels. Youth Banking Sistem can insure «an effective promotion of enterpreneurship among young women and men»; it can provide a better know-how and  information on market opportunities; it can organize training in business skills; it can access the sources of capital and financial services; and finally it can become a mentoring service to support other business activities.
     From our own experience, as well as of those of us who participated at the World Youth Forum in Dakar, Open Up Conference on Social Exclusion held in October 2001 in Stocholm, SEE Youth Policy Forum in October 2001 in Sofia and many other international meetings and conferences, we know that as long as young people do not have financial and economic independence their elders will make them feel overly dependent on the obsolete  yesterday's world. 
     How can a young computer-entrepreneur convince a conservative, traditional banker, to realy believe in the financial efficiency of his “virtual company” or “paperless eBanking facilities” and give him a credit or other kind of financial support? No chance, today!
     And imagine how many new jobs could be opened throughout the world through the  GLOBAL YOUTH BANKING & FINANCIAL NETWORK (GYBFN)! And how many new ideas could be adopted and financially supported, by this new approach towards the new young generations?! And how many technology transfers could happen in the developing and non-developed world, with this new mode of thinking and tolerant intergenerational attitude?!
     The key issue of the “Croatian National Youth Empowerment Action Programme” is the establishment of a Youth Bank in the Republic of Croatia followed by  the  establishment of similar banks in other countries of the Region, and of the World. We have developed an original plan for low-cost founding of such a bank  in Croatia, assuming the support of the Croatian Government, as well as  the expected “help from our friends” abroad. 
     Youth Bank is supposed to be a special financial agency, managing money without extra-profits for its founders (NYC members). It will be dedicated to professionally solve youth problems of unemployment, education, permanent health-care, housing, enterpreneurship, career development and other. The basic objective of the Youth Bank is to prepare young people for the challenges of the life-long competition challenges on the labour and capital market.
     The financial services of the Youth Bank will be empowered by formal and informal life-long education practices and training programs. The Bank will also supply youth with consulting and  mentorship capabilities, as well as  other forms of support to unemployed, startup entrepreneurs and services to the youth in general.
     The Youth Bank will adopt permanent management and monitoring  system  in order to achieve the needed  full transparency in handling public, state and private funds deposited in it. It is particularly worthwhile to mention that the Youth Bank is supposed to play an impotrant role in building up a sustained  culture of savings. 
     Balkan Regional Youth Bank (supposed to be located in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegowina), as a special financial agency, may display an even broader social role. It can be a powerful tool to promote cooperation among nations and achievement of the long-term peace in this troubled region.
     The described model could be a new way to support the financial independence of young people throughout the world. A scheme of the  GLOBAL YOUTH BANKING & FINANCIAL NETWORK (GYBFN) system could be a kind of a contemporary “Marshall plan” for many developing economies (with Youth becoming thair own «marshalls» this time, «without waiting for Governments to tell them what to do»).
     Youth Banks would finance a broad spectrum of original educational programs, which are generally known under the term “accelerative learning”. In this respect,  CNYC founders have a positive experience with the “Method for Teaching Economics, Management and Accounting” of Dr. Milan R. Juranovic (the method is supported by eighteen U.S. copyrights (1982 - 2001) and two U.S. patent pending  registrations (1999 - 2001). As a further reference, this  method is cited in SAP Solutions 2001 and is used in IBM Business Courses (Zagreb, 2001), etc.

3.   Finally, we think that Youth in general is a key security and prevention issue in today's world. Modern technologies are readily accessible to millions of youngsters who feel betrayed and abandoned by those elders who still teach their obsolete socio-economic theories. The key aspects of todays electronic, nuclear and space security sistems are among everyday realities of the young people and their real or “virtual occupations”. Let us be aware of the power-impact of this young human resource. This is why our Croatian concept of employment is  based on the premise of financial independence of the Youth. In this way we can accelerate our common march thowards the Global Socio-Economic Security and development based on Knowledge, InterCultural and InterGenerational tolerance and understanding.