At the start of April 2025, CEO and Co-founder of Pure and Just Company, Yvette Tetteh, was invited to share her thoughts and experience at UN SDSN Vatican Youth Symposium. Below are her words on coming together with 60 other youth leaders from around the world:
I have attended quite a few discussions, talks, conferences, and I often find that I leave a little bit… unsatisfied. I struggle to find the experience productive or helpful. Not so with the Vatican Youth Symposium !
The forum aims to foster lasting partnerships and strengthen movements that have a direct impact on the achievement of the 2030 Agenda for global sustainability.
I left the symposium feeling that the experience was genuinely sincere, engaging, and helpful. I came home with so many reminders that “development” and “sustainability” cannot just be buzzwords, but that we need to consciously and intentionally weave these concepts and realities into the work we do everyday. Like, literally use the language and vocabulary of sustainable development in our work and community spaces.
For my part, I spoke about the relationship between youth entrepreneurship and sustainable development. The two key learnings I shared from my own experience:
- Young entrepreneurs (especially in developing country contexts) need to extend themselves (and their teams!) grace – and to consider sustainable impact on a long(er) timeline. There’s so much urgency in the world, but we first have to get this business off the ground and make small(er), necessary impacts in our immediate space.
- We have to make friends and connect and support each other ! We don’t need big conferences to do this or fancy tech platforms, sometimes it’s just being able to quickly WhatsApp other entrepreneur friends to ask for their advice and or contacts. Thank you to Kwami Williams and Peter Mueller for modelling such an incredible commitment to collaborative and supportive ways of working.
Grateful to the Sustainable Development Solutions Network Youth and the Pontifical Academy of Sciences for hosting such a great event.