Youth power to drive sustainable growth

Passionate to help bring about changes in society, Xu served as a volunteer for the Beijing Olympics Games in 2008 and Shanghai Expo in 2010.

"It was my dream to be a volunteer for the Games. I felt passionate and committed during the entire month."

During the Games, Xu was responsible for making a contact list of all staff at a football venue.

Two years later at the expo Xu was a team leader of a group of volunteers responsible for one pavilion.

"We couldn't hold back our tears when we sang songs to say goodbye to all the visitors on the last day of the six-month expo."

Another of those who attended was Aqua Huang, 29, a product manager with Lancome China Marketing Group, which is a part of cosmetics giant L'Oreal. She is particularly interested in sustainability, which was a hot topic at the summit.

"We discussed how the current business model works in our economy, which is about making money by utilizing limited resources. But this may not be sustainable. I really hope to take some of the lessons we talked about back to my workplace and see how L'Oreal can do things better."

An interest in sustainability has led Huang to organize initiatives in this direction.

One initiative is Green Friday, in which Huang encouraged her team members to engage in non-work-related activities on Fridays and share ideas with each other. They either organize a group activity or invite a guest speaker from another company to deliver a lecture.

Huang's second initiative is a tree planting program in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region in partnership with non-government organization NPO Greenlife.

When her team launched a new product line in July, she came up with the idea for L'Oreal to sponsor the planting of a tree in Inner Mongolia for every three bottles of the new product sold in the name of a particular staff member and his or her family. Her team has sold enough products to plant 20,588 trees in Inner Mongolia.

Huang says she feels it is important for young people in China to display leadership, as society is changing rapidly and young people are the most connected with new phenomena.

"There are lots of Chinese young people eager to express their opinions and bring about changes. There are lots of young entrepreneurs, and I think many cutting-edge products are developed by young people."

Huang herself is a testimony to this process of youth leadership development and engagement. Joining the L'Oreal team as a management trainee seven years ago, she has gradually learned key skills of leadership and now supervises a team of five.

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