Businessman Joseph M. Matalon appointed Chairman of International Youth Foundation
Published:Friday | September 16, 2022 | 10:16 AM
Jamaican businessman Joseph M. Matalon has been appointed Chairman of the International Youth Foundation, a global body geared at empowering young people.
The appointment took effect on September 8.
Matalon has been serving on the board for the past 10 years.
He says he is passionate about youth development and is looking forward to advancing this cause.
“IYF is a global organisation but a majority of our work takes place in the global south. The fact that I will become the first IYF chair who is from the global south is important and can work in our favour. I hope this will be a factor that can be leveraged during my tenure as chair,” Matalon explained during a Q&A facilitated by former IYF youth board member Dina Buchbind.
“I very much believe our strategic areas of focus—Youth Agency and Economic Opportunity—are critical to the impact we can make.
“I'm also convinced that if we are to have impact at scale, our third area of strategic focus, Systems Change, needs to undergird all that we do,” he said.
Matalon explained that the role of IYF's Board of Directors—and the primary role of the Chair—is to offer strategic counsel and above all to “serve the organisation and its people, to support them in whatever way possible to maximise the impact IYF can have throughout the world.”
Matalon first became involved with IYF back in 2009 as part of its OBRA programme, a USAID-funded initiative developed in response to US President Obama's 2009 Summit of the Americas call for renewed and strengthened public-private partnerships promoting greater opportunities for young people in the Latin American and Caribbean region.
At the time, Matalon was President of a key local implementing partner, the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica.
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