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10 Adolescent Psychology in Today’s World (UNDESA, 2017). UNICEF reports a demographic trend called the “youth bulge,” in which some of the least developed nations have the greatest increase of youth ages 15 to 24 as a percentage of their population, mainly in expanding urban regions. From 2012 to 2020, there will be 1.1 billion older youth who need productive employment around the world. A crisis has emerged as many will likely not find jobs and, therefore, struggle to become productive members of civil society. Each year, an estimated average of 121 million adolescents are turning 16, an age that commonly serves as a marker of maturity. Eighty-nine percent of these older youth are living in regions that are not fully developed economically, and many of the communities also face debilitating political and military conflicts along with health crises (Ortiza & Cummins, 2012). Youth-Adult Partnerships The instrumental purpose of Global Child and Youth Care Work (GCYCW) is to form authentic youth-adult partnerships in which adults mentor, teach, and share life experience as young people increasingly gain mastery of the developmentally appropriate skills and competencies they need to succeed at home, school, and work. The GCYCW initiative approaches young people as resources to be nurtured rather than as defi- cits to be remediated. At heart, the close relationships that result from child and youth care are entrepreneurial in both choice and voice, as youth interact with adults to recognize and uniquely configure the resources available to build social and economic capital. In GCYCW, adults and youth share perspectives on the challenges and opportunities at hand by creating safe spaces to share, thereby allowing youth to shape, test, and follow through on the opportunities being developed. Strongly attached (emotionally close) relationships are formed through activities that support youth in negotiating the challenges of everyday life and establishing patterns for lifelong learning. In GCYCW, youth can count on receiving concrete support in times of need and on the permanence of relationships over the long term. This chapter is an overview for this way of working as Child and Youth Care Work reaches every continent through the website www.cyc -net.org, an online learning portal that includes the dissemination and exchange of best-practice research and techniques among 213 countries and territories. While founded originally in the United Kingdom, ­ C anada, the United States, and Australia—countries that, to this day, serve as hubs for new knowledge in universities and large youth-serving ­ o rganizations— GCYCW has increased in cultures as diverse as those in South Africa, the