HomeUnder Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public AffairsRemarks & Releases...Balkan Youth Leader Summit Keynote Address

# 									Balkan Youth Leader Summit Keynote Address							

Remarks

Elizabeth M. Allen, Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs

Sjenica, Serbia

May 17, 2024

Hello, TGIF.  Happy last day of your conference.

Holly, thank you for that really warm welcome.  I appreciate it.  It’s always a little bit humbling when you sit and have someone recite the last twenty years of your life. But the two most important things I’ll say about me right now are, yes, I am a long-suffering Buffalo Bills, football fan, and yes, I am on the Balkans road trip.

So, I am in the middle of an eight-day four country road trip.  I started in Sarajevo, came through Bosnia, have spent the last few days in Belgrade, came here today will cross into Kosovo tomorrow, spend some time in Pristina, and I get to go to North Macedonia and fly out of Skopje.

And the truth is that coming this week, and doing this program was centered around coming to see all of you today.  This is why I came this week, on these dates, because when I found out we were doing this summit with all of you, it was really important for me to be here and to come bring greetings and some words from my colleagues in Washington, DC.  Because you really are the best thing that we’re doing with our resources in the United States government.

This public diplomacy that you speak of is really about investing in relationships. So, I want to spend a little time right now talking about that.  I have some remarks because we have as you can see some of our friends in the media here.  We want to be able to explain to them what you’re all doing.  I want to be able to highlight some of your work in these remarks.  And then I’m really looking forward to having an open conversation.  So, bear with me as I say a few words at the top here and then I am an open book to talk about any part of my career or current work or, when you come up to the mic, I would love to hear from all of you.  So, anybody that wants to share their story, their project, their reflection on the BOLD experience, please feel free to do that when we sit down.  Okay?

So let me start by saying...well I said most of these things.  I hope that you know that celebrating the BOLD program is about really believing in all of you and investing in all of you.  We know that to build a shared future we want to see it’s only going to happen by increasing understanding, not always agreement, but understanding between everybody.  And so, we believe in you, we trust you and that’s really the message that I hope you hear from BOLD loud and clear.  That you have what it takes to shape the future of your communities and countries, especially if you do it together.

Beyond the primary goal of BOLD to realize your individual successes, the ultimate goal of the network is to move all of the Balkans forward together.  With stronger democracies and more open economies.  So, as I said, public diplomacy work is central to our shared foreign policy agendas.  We live in a world, as many of us have talked about, where everyone is more connected than ever.  Where relationships between countries aren’t just shaped by relationships between our governments, but by every sector in society, between people, between all of you.

We are also facing issues that aren’t just bilateral and multilateral, right? How do we define diplomacy these days?  It isn’t just economics and security between two peoples.   It’s also working on issues that we all share, that are disrupting all of our lives, whether it’s emerging technology, climate change, food security.  We know that we have to work together to solve these shared challenges and that means that every person can make a difference in doing so.

One goal for all BOLD programs is excellence in content with meaningful experiences and mentoring that will help you succeed.   And I’ve already heard a little bit today about some of the peer mentoring of each other which I’m deeply interested in. Another equally important goal is to create new relationships between you, between rising young leaders.  Any successful leader will tell you that they were not able to achieve their accomplishments on their own.  And I’ve already heard about this today, that when you realize you can’t do it alone, it unlocks a lot of power.

Through relationships, through encouragement, through resources, through expanded networks, you are able to increase your sphere of influence and find opportunities.  That’s certainly true of me.  I’ve benefited from my network, from people believing in me, from being in places where we have a chance encounter to take advantage of chance opportunity.  And as we all also know a little bit of luck and timing helps all of us.  We see over and over that people working hard to make a difference do it better together.  And that is why the essence of bold is programs that bring you together in an atmosphere where ideation, innovation and risk taking is encouraged.  And I’m eager to hear from all of you about what you’ve learned in the last few days.

For example, two BOLD members from the 2024 fellowship on economic development, Tamara Ilić and Uroš Poček, give a big round of applause.  They understood when they combined their passion for two different startup ideas, it might lead to a third, and it did.  So, Solarise and Student Ventures were not really related to begin with.  The first makes installing solar panels easier and more affordable through AI.  The other provides a pathway for recent graduates to get real work experience to enrich their CVs.  And as they supported each other in doing the hard work to initiate their own projects.  They found the time and energy and the vision for a third.

And their new joint project Idea Night will bring startup ecosystem stakeholders together to grow a community of support.  Awesome.  So, we know that communities of innovation foster more innovation and that’s what you are doing as active members of this influential network that connects BOLD leaders across the Balkans.  And on the Balkans, let me clear as a U.S. government official to reiterate very clearly, the United States is committed to the Balkans.  And we’re committed to your shared future.

The vision for BOLD is to build innovative communities, not only in your countries, but as I mentioned, across borders for the first time this year.  As you all know –but for those who don’t – BOLD workshops had participants from each of your countries participating.  This is the first time we’ve brought you all together.  Your shared history, culture, borders, makes developing relationships that much easier. Cultivating these relationships will set you on a path to shaping your future and the future of your country and your region.

So, if public diplomacy is about relationships, then the Balkan region is a region ripe for public diplomacy.  And of course, I have to note, we saw the worst kind of breakdown of relationships that can happen during the wars in the 1990s.  But you, the first post-war generation, have the incredible opportunity to reforge connections and redefine your relationships.  You are working together on BOLD projects in countries with similar economic systems, systems of governance and social structures.  When you meet the inevitable obstacles to success as you launch your initiative or start a business your Balkan friends are the ones you turn to for the best advice, as I’ve already heard today from some of you.  You share the same markets for your products, audiences for your ideas, and many of the same systemic obstacles.

On the next...another example, two BOLD members, one from Serbia, one from Bosnia, where are you Jana Žarković and Anna Elena Banduka.  You had this vision when you came together to launch the Western Balkans Silk Road, which I’ve heard about, when you returned from the BOLD fellowship on civic engagement.  Your project is galvanizing young designers to tackle regional societal issues through creative means.  You are harvesting the aspirations of artists and designers to jointly tackle the shared difficulties that you face, which are ultimately more uniting than dividing.  Together, you are addressing censorship and freedom of speech, issues for women in fashion and design, and creating a platform for expressing opinions through artistic endeavors. It’s amazing work.

Regional collaboration is the future of the Balkans and will create relationships that outlast current events and current governments.  Those of you who have participated in BOLD fellowships in the United States had the opportunity to expand your relationships beyond this region, and then also bring back the skills and networks you developed during your exchange.  And some of you became NFL football fans.  Well done.

In my role as Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy, we are very lucky to welcome so many international visitors to the United States each year.  As Holly mentioned, my team and I oversee dozens of academic and professional exchange programs that bring participants from around the world to Washington and beyond.  The creativity and dedication of those visitors is also fueling creativity, innovation, and solutions in the United States and around the world.  And one of the most encouraging things I heard from some of you who had the chance to go to the United States was your aspiration to expand your organization to have an overseas exchange potentially of your business and expand to franchises in the United States.  That’s deeply powerful because those communities can benefit from that too.

The United States believes strongly in this principle of exchange, and my job is to oversee our investments with people who, no matter what our differences are, have the same goals to build a more robust community, stronger economy, and vibrant societies that are inclusive, democratic and forward looking.  There are people all over the world, as you now know, with that same vision and we are doing what we can to bring them together to achieve these goals.

After all the Balkans went through the generation before you, it is your time to take the lead in creating the kind of open, vibrant, democratic societies that foster innovation. You are the generation that can demand better.  And you know it.  You can manifest a more integrated, prosperous and BOLDer, if I may, future for your communities.  You have the talent, skills, and a beautiful part of the world to shape into what you want it to be.  And we are here to be your partner and to support you.

So, we need leaders.  We need you.  We need the kind of communities that you want to see because they will not be handed to you. You have to create them.  You are creating them.  And you are creating them together.  You all know that launching an initiative takes hard work, but the difficult truth that it may fail or at least not succeed the way you hoped is also okay.  Failure is part of the leadership journey for everyone and provides the lessons needed for anyone to be a true leader.

Where is Ali Kontić, we talked earlier, hello Ali.  Ali was telling me about his senior computer literacy program and organization and how initially, he had trouble finding success because people didn’t know how to invest in the right way and set up a program that would actually work for senior citizens.  But now he is well on his way to success and the senior lab has opened a whole new world to older folks in Bosnia and is bringing generations together and giving them access to services.  That is deeply inspiring for what it is doing for those people’s lives. And it means overcoming adversity to having gotten there.

Your project may meet obstacles no matter what it is.  And some systemic obstacles may be so difficult that you have to start over.  But the point is that you have resilience, and you know it because you’ve seen it here this week.  You also have the support networks to start over and you have partners in us.  Some projects will actually invite resistance from people who disagree with what you’re doing, or from those who fear change.  Don’t we all know it.  But the greater and greatest leaders among us have the courage to persist through those kinds of setbacks and here I want to highlight a young Balkan woman.  We’ll pay tribute to her work as well, who has long been an advocate for a social and legal visibility of children born in war, and since 2018 she has been the President of the Forgotten Children of War, so we will pay her tribute as well.

Let’s wrap up.  Let’s get to discussion.  Let’s treat it like Friday afternoon.  Just a couple of things to recap for what I’d love you to take away from my remarks today.

First, and you know this – leadership takes courage.  Courage takes hard work. Risk and you will overcome obstacles. You all have that kind of courage.  That’s why we’re here.  Especially since you’re relying on each other and the BOLD network to support you.  You have another ally here too, those of us in the United States and the United States government.  We are supporting you in your leadership journey because we believe the future of this region is in the good hands of its youth.  A generation of leaders who want to see a European future for the Balkans.  And let me tell you, as someone who is meeting with government leaders on this trip, I am telling them this.  We know that it’s possible for building a network of positive and supportive relationships.  Working together in this region, you can move the Balkans forward to a more open and prosperous future.

So, thank you for your commitment to BOLD.  For those of you who signed up online, we’re so glad that you did.  For those that heard about this from a friend or somewhere that you did.  I’m deeply happy to be here and very happy to talk about what you want to talk about.  Happy BOLD!

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Bureau of European and Eurasian AffairsSerbiaUnder Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs

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