7 Sep 2015

Youth look to entrepreneurship for improvement

3:51 pm on 7 September 2015

More than 40 youth leaders from around the Pacific have met in Auckland to discuss how social entrepreneurship can improve their communities.

The youth delegates attended the third 'Future Leaders of the Pacific' conference which was organised by the US State Department and the East-West Center in Hawaii.

Delegates discussed issues such as social entrepreneurship in an indigenous context, public-private partnerships, identifying needs, and putting social entrepreneurship into practice.

The East-West Center's Jerry Finin says the event brought together people working in areas like climate change, non-communicable disease and tradition and culture.

"Each of the individuals is involved in a social entrepreneur project addressing the challenges and issues that are of greatest priority to their individual areas and we wanted to bring them together with others so that they could learn new approaches, new ideas and over time be supportive of each other."

Youth meeting in Samoa.

Youth meeting in Samoa. Photo: RNZI / Koroi Hawkins