Members of the Future Leaders Network gain access to some genuinely awesome personal development opportunities, none more so than our recruitment of delegates to the annual Y7 and Y20 Summits. So what are the Y7 and Y20 Summits and what do we look for in our delegates?
What are Y7 and Y20?
Y7 and Y20 are the youth engagement groups of their respective international gatherings, G7 and G20. World Leaders use the youth engagement groups in an attempt to freshen their understanding of the key issues facing young people across the globe and to connect with young people in order to solicit their solutions and ideas to help combat these challenges.
Therefore, annually, the host countries for the G7 and G20 also organise and host the youth counterparts. This typically takes the form of a week-long summit in the host country, bringing together young people from across the globe, where those challenges facing young people are discussed and debated. The output of each Summit is a communique, which is then fed back to the World Leaders for their perusal. It’s a genuinely unique chance to influence at the highest level and it’s only available in the UK, to members of the Future Leaders Network.
What do we look for when recruiting our delegates?
We want to send the best prepared, most articulate and most pragmatic delegates to represent the UK at these Summits. Each host country chooses a different series of topics to place on their agenda and, as we typically recruit five delegates per Summit, we look for an appropriate range of expertise and experiences. However there are a core series of attributes that we expect in all our delegates:
1/ Strong Communication
It goes without saying that representing your country at an international summit requires strong communication skills! Specifically, we’re talking about the ability to present a clear argument – a skill that’s useful, as while the Summit’s language of negotiation is English, the level of fluency amongst other delegates varies and it can be a huge advantage to be able to articulate in such a way that ensure universal understanding and lack of ambiguity.
We also look for strong interpersonal skills – can you build strong one-on-one relationships, can you hold the attention of a room of people when you speak?
2/ Ability to persuade and debate
The next core attribute is the ability to persuade and debate intelligently. This is distinct from strong communication skills, because you also need to be able to think on your feet, adjust and adapt your position and be perceptive. You need to know what motivates people to take the debating positions they are taking and what might influence them. You need to read the room and understand how your perspective could be more attractive if articulated slightly differently. Finally, we look for a balanced approach from our delegates. This means that we don’t want to appoint aggressive debators, but we do want to appoint skilled debators that can judge when to press home an opinion and when to hold back.
3/ Pragmatism
It’s extremely easy to get carried away when developing policy. Grand plans, with limitless budgets and big ambitions at their heart are evocative, but won’t be taken seriously by World Leaders. We’re looking for delegates that have a strong level of understanding as to how their solutions will work in practice and how they will be administered by Governments across the range participating countries.
4/ Creative
As much as we love practical solutions and delegates that take a pragmatic approach to policy development, that doesn’t mean we want to stifle creativity. If you’re a problem solver, if you can think a little differently, we want you on the team.
5/ Team work
It’s easy to spot the delegates that are in it for themselves. Delegations however, are far more effective if there is a genuine team spirit amongst delegates. So we’re looking for delegates that believe in contributing to the team effort for greater shared benefit. You’ll gain much more from the experience if you take this approach and the team will be stronger because of it.
So there you have it, five core attributes that we are looking for when we recruit the UK delegates to the Y7 and Y20 Summits. If you think you tick these boxes, then head on over to our news section to find out if we’re currently recruiting!