If any aspects of the C-19 pandemic may be referred to as positive, it is the sharp rise in risk management awareness and literacy among actors who had rarely previously needed to think in risk-management terms, beyond their immediate operational realities. One example was the largest youth exchange non-profit whose risk management processes had mostly been aligned to those of an insurance company, i.e. risk primarily managed contractually rather than through robust internal processes.

When the global pandemic was declared by the WHO in March 2020, the organisation had weeks to repatriate around 7,000 students among 55 countries along more than 200 routes, all amidst progressive airline closures and changing travel and entry restrictions. While engaging in such an immense logistical exercise, the network – comprising a US-based clearing centre and 50+ independent country-level organisations – also had to safeguard its institutional legacy of over 100 years and its business model heavily dependent on international youth mobility and access to national education systems, many of which closed down.

Rooted in the Enterprise Risk Management approach, one of the YTL founders guided the global network and its members through a scenario-planning process that defined a shared vision, engagement rules and an emergency operating mode around a shared risk assessment. This was accompanied by a variety of practical tools to monitor country-level developments including early-warning systems and traffic-light systems. Some of these tools were later adopted outside of the network, whether by a local NGO in Chile, a foundation in Switzerland, or a department in the Japanese Ministry of Education.

The assignment required regularly convening people from across the globe and over eighteen time zones to sustain a strong institutional culture grounded in internal accountability, open dialogue and shared outcome ownership, at a time when each member organisation was understandably increasingly focused on its own survival as divergent interests and pressures surfaced. In the end, fewer than five network members had to suspend their operations, while the rest navigated the pandemic, emerging with renewed momentum and moving into a phase of reinvigorated post-pandemic growth and fresh challenges related to international youth mobility.