{"id":145585,"date":"2026-09-28T21:05:48","date_gmt":"2026-09-28T18:05:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fye-yemen.net\/?p=145585"},"modified":"2026-09-28T22:23:55","modified_gmt":"2026-09-28T19:23:55","slug":"global-leaders-highlight-social-business-youth-and-technology-at-unga-81","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fye-yemen.net\/?p=145585","title":{"rendered":"Global Leaders Highlight Social Business, Youth and Technology at UNGA 81"},"content":{"rendered":"

Paula Sweis<\/a><\/p>\n

New York- Paula Sweis – UN<\/p>\n

UNITED NATIONS, New York \u2014 Global leaders, Nobel laureates, policymakers and business and technology figures gathered at United Nations Headquarters on September 21 for a high-level event examining how social business, youth leadership and emerging technologies can contribute to sustainable development.<\/p>\n

Held during the 81st session of the United Nations General Assembly, the event, titled \u201cSocial Business, Youth and Technology,\u201d centered on the theme \u201c2026: 50 Years of Micro Credit, 2030: The Year of Social Business.\u201d The gathering marked five decades since the beginnings of the microcredit movement associated with Nobel Peace Prize laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus, while looking ahead to the potential role of social enterprise in addressing poverty, unemployment and environmental challenges.<\/p>\n

\"Paula
Paula Sweis<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Yunus, who received the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize jointly with Grameen Bank, addressed the evolution of microfinance and the broader concept of social business. His remarks connected the history of microcredit with efforts to expand entrepreneurship and financial inclusion, while emphasizing the role young people and new technologies can play in developing solutions to social problems. Recent reporting on the event also noted Yunus\u2019s discussion of Grameen America and applications of social business in areas including healthcare.<\/p>\n

The event also featured Jos\u00e9 Ramos-Horta, President of Timor-Leste and 1996 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, alongside Dr. Khalilur Rahman, President of the 81st session of the United Nations General Assembly. Other announced participants represented governments, international institutions, technology, philanthropy, entrepreneurship and civil society.<\/p>\n

In his address, Rahman emphasized a larger role for young people in decision-making, arguing that youth participation should move beyond consultation toward leadership, policy design, entrepreneurship and implementation. His speech placed youth agency alongside social business and technological innovation as tools for advancing sustainable development.<\/p>\n

The discussion came as governments and development organizations continue to assess progress toward the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, with financial inclusion, entrepreneurship and access to technology remaining important components of efforts to address economic inequality.<\/p>\n

A central theme of the gathering was Yunus\u2019s vision of a \u201cWorld of Three Zeros\u201d \u2014 zero poverty, zero unemployment and zero net carbon emissions. The concept links social entrepreneurship with the idea that businesses can be designed to solve societal problems rather than focusing exclusively on maximizing profit.<\/p>\n

The event brought together perspectives from finance, business and technology as well. Participants announced for the program included Andrea Jung, President and CEO of Grameen America; Kerry Kennedy, President of Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights; Hamza Chishti, Director of Cloud and AI Innovation at Microsoft; Ismail Serageldin, former Vice President of the World Bank; and Shazeeb M. Khairul Islam, Managing Director of YY Ventures, among others.<\/p>\n

Jung leads Grameen America, a nonprofit microfinance organization founded in 2008 to support women entrepreneurs facing economic barriers in the United States. The organization says it has invested more than $6.6 billion in over 260,000 small businesses since its founding. Jung has led the organization since 2014 after previously serving as chairman and CEO of Avon Products.<\/p>\n

The inclusion of technology leaders alongside microfinance and social-business advocates reflected another dimension of the discussion: how artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies can be directed toward human-centered development rather than widening existing economic divides.<\/p>\n

Youth leadership was similarly positioned not simply as a subject of development policy, but as part of its implementation. Entrepreneurs and younger generations were presented as potential creators of enterprises capable of addressing social and environmental problems while generating sustainable economic activity.<\/p>\n

The gathering also reflected the evolution of microcredit from an experiment that began in Bangladesh five decades ago into a much broader international conversation about financial inclusion, entrepreneurship and the role of business in development.<\/p>\n

As the international community moves closer to the 2030 deadline for the Sustainable Development Goals, the discussion at UN Headquarters highlighted an increasingly interconnected question: how finance, entrepreneurship, technology and public policy can be combined to create development models that expand economic opportunity while addressing social needs.<\/p>\n

The high-level event was held in Conference Room 1 at United Nations Headquarters in New York and organized by the Global Committee on Social Business for Sustainable Development Goals, with participation from the Yunus Centre and partner organizations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Paula Sweis New York- Paula Sweis – UN UNITED NATIONS, New York \u2014 Global leaders, Nobel laureates, policymakers and business and technology figures gathered at United Nations Headquarters on September 21 for a high-level event examining how social business, youth leadership and emerging technologies can contribute to sustainable development. Held during the 81st session of …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":145586,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-145585","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-diverse-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fye-yemen.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145585","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fye-yemen.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fye-yemen.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fye-yemen.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fye-yemen.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=145585"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/fye-yemen.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145585\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":145592,"href":"https:\/\/fye-yemen.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145585\/revisions\/145592"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fye-yemen.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/145586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fye-yemen.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=145585"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fye-yemen.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=145585"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fye-yemen.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=145585"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}