Influential decision makers are seldom youthful, but in Italy young adults could qualify as a margin-alised minority group. Precarious and poorly-paid emp！oyment is endemic even for university graduates.Unemployment for those aged 15 to 24 is among the highest in Europe at nearly 20 percent, and hoversroughly fourteen points higher than Italys general population.
Thanks to three decades of pottering fertility rates,those over 65 outnumber those under theage of15 by almost 50 percent. Pop culture,usually a domain of the young,sees rock stars and TV hosts un-shaken from top billings well into retirement age. And if youre an Italian university student, as SeleneBiffi was four years ago, the older faces of the teaching staff do not inspire hope for ones own careerprospects: just 4.6 percent are under the age of 35.
In 2004, Selene Biffi, had an enterprising idea to empower young people like herself. At 22, finishingher studies in Milan, she yearned to do something positive for the world, something aimed at real socialchange rather than blindly scrambling for solid footing on the nearest career ladder. However, she feltfrustrated, unskilled,and even a bit of a pariah for the nature of her deepest aspiration.
During a meeting of Oxfams International Youth Parliament in Sydney, Australia, where Biffi was adelegate, it dawned on her that many of her international peers had real skills that could unglue otherfrustrated young people from their sofas and enable them to do something practical about their mostheart-felt causes. Armed with a web-based organisation, she could create virtual classrooms in which ayoung social activist from Peru, for example, could train peers anywhere from Serbia to Senegal throughcost-free online courses.
The organisation she founded in 2005, Youth Action for Change （YAC）, has now certified morethan a thousand young people in 130 countries to spearhead their own grassroots initiatives on issues likewomens rights, clean water, sanitation, and sustainable development.
Still,it has been a difficult haul, with accolades and recognition far easier to procure than funding.Biffi has been showered with international awards for her civic activism, and supports herself by givingmotivational speeches to major non-governmental organisations, such as the United Nations, UNESCO,and the World Bank. The success of YAC has also helped her plunge into other youth advocacy initia-tives, like a blog space called "Forgotten Diaries" that gives young people living in war-torn regions avoice. Biffi also launched a scholarship fund for young people in areas experiencing conflict, and is alsorepresenting the interests of youth and children at the United Nations Commission on Sustainable De-velopment.
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