The generation of young delegates attending One Young World 2011 were described by Bangladeshi economist, banker, and Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus as the "luckiest generation in the entire human history" as he called for the creation of a social business fund for delegates to take what they have learned in Zurich and design their own social business startups.

After his speech, Yunus handed the microphone to One Young World co-founder David Jones to raucous applause, and Jones immediately announced the creation of the One Young World Social Business Fund, which will provide investments to the best 5 or 10 social business proposals selected at next year's summit in Pittsburgh.

"I swear this wasn't scripted," Jones laughed.

Social business was at the core of Yunus's closing speech to One Young World. Yunus, co-founder of his own social business, the Grameen Bank, said that networking through social media has made the creation of social businesses easier than ever. "If you can create jobs for 10 people, even five people, you have hit the most difficult problem humans have ever faced: creating jobs," said Yunus. "That's the task. It's fun. Unleash it."

"Just look at the things that happened in your lifetime, in the last ten years. Things that didn't exist are here, in your pockets, in your hands," Yunus told the delegates. "You are the most powerful generation in the whole world. And the most knowledgeable generation because you know how to access information. You are much more prepared than anyone else in any other generation."
Yunus, while decidedly optimistic, also spoke of the severity of the world's problems. "We need a gear-shift," he said. "The same old gear that brought the world up to this point isn't going to work anymore."

That gear-shift, in Yunus's vision, is the power of technology and social media, which, despite its short lifespan, has been central to this year's summit. "It's not a transition from the old world to the new world; it's a jump to the new world," said Yunus. "Get ready for the jump."

Source: http://www.oneyoungnewsroom.com/2011/09/03/muhammad-yunus-speech-leads-to-one-young-world-social-business-fund/