The growing crisis of youth unemployment is one such example.

“Not being able to find a job makes me feel excluded, useless, and immature,” says Valeria Senson, an 18-year-old unemployed teenager living in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Clearly, having a job is critical to a young person’s sense of worth and hopes for the future as well as economic survival. Yet according to the International Labor Organization (ILO), young people are twice as likely to be unemployed as adults in most countries, and more than 100 million new jobs will have to be created by 2015 to meet the employment needs of youth in the developing world who are entering the job market.

While addressing young people’s needs and aspirations—including adequate job training and employment opportunities—can help create more stable and secure societies, the opposite holds true. High unemployment increases youth’s sense of alienation, hopelessness, and frustration, all of which can lead to violence. We simply can’t afford to have so many of today’s young people on the margins of society, looking in.

So is there any good news? I think there is, particularly when young people are seen as assets critical to the development and progress in their communities—not “problems to be solved.” In certain Latin American and Caribbean countries, for example, up to two-thirds of the 15-to-24-year-olds are out of school, unemployed, and seeking work. Yet there is also a growing demand in the region for skilled workers in the area of information and communication technology.

In response, the Multilateral Investment Fund (MIF), a member of the Inter-American Development Bank Group that supports the development of the private sector, has joined forces with the International Youth Foundation (IYF) to create entra 21, an initiative aimed at helping to train up to 12,000 of the region’s disadvantaged youth and help them to find jobs. The $25 million program is co-financing youth employment projects in information technology through local grants that support training and job placement. Lucent Technologies and Microsoft are among the corporate partners supporting the program, and the U. S. Agency for International Development  has committed to investing $3 million in entra 21 in the next three years.

Unlike many similar programs, this one is grounded in communities—with the youth training programs tied to the employment needs of local companies. For example, in Bolivia, 600 young people will be trained to help nonprofit organizations in rural and urban communities link up with a new nationwide telecommunications network system.

In Colombia, 500 young people will gain technical competencies that are in demand by local employers. In the Dominican Republic, entra 21will help 360 disadvantaged youth to gain the technical and personal skills they need to qualify for jobs being created in the fast-growing city of Santiago. Another key to this initiative’s success: global corporations, NGOs, and governments are working in partnership, bringing their specific resources, assets, lessons, and expertise to a common mission, and thus maximizing their impact on young lives.

I cannot overemphasize the private sector’s stake in helping to ensure that today’s young people are equipped with the skills, knowledge and values they need to thrive in a global society. We are not just preparing future workers and consumers. Particularly at a time when violence and instability threaten communities worldwide, we must help nurture a spirit of citizenship, leadership, positive engagement, and democracy within this young generation. We can build a more secure world—but only when all of us, as members of the global community, commit to dramatically expanding the opportunities for success among today’s youth.