In response to the global challenge of youth unemployment, a growing number of organizations and government agencies are working to expand effective job and employability training opportunities among young people worldwide. One such effort comes under the framework of Youth:Work, a global partnership launched in 2008 between USAID and the International Youth Foundation (IYF), to facilitate the development of new public-private partnerships to support youth employment programs around the world. In furtherance of this aim, this issue of FieldNotes focuses on how developing alliances with the private sector is critical to a program’s success in providing youth with marketable skills and placing them in decent employment. By highlighting experiences drawn from entra21, a regional youth employment initiative in Latin America and the Caribbean, we hope to provide other programs with practical lessons and tips on how to engage the business community.