In his first public speech since leaving office, former president Barack Obama shared his goal to empower and prepare the next generation of leaders and changemakers. Last week, he made it clear he was serious.

Barack and former First Lady Michelle Obama hosted more than 500 community leaders from around the world in their hometown of Chicago for the first-ever Obama Foundation Summit. On October 31 and November 1, attendees — some of whom are established leaders and others are just getting started in civic engagement — attended “breakout sessions” on topics like “Getting Women in the Room Where it Happens” and “Beyond ‘Clicktivism’: Mobilizing Communities for Change,” as well as “mainstage sessions” featuring speeches and conversations from the Obamas, as well as Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda, rapper Common, Prince Harry, and more.

“We are bringing together several hundred both rising and established community leaders from across the world to build connections [and] really think about and explore different solutions to some of the biggest challenges that we face as a society right now,” Anne Filipic, chief operating officer and interim chief programming officer of the Obama Foundation, tells Teen Vogue. “And really to celebrate and lift up people who are doing really innovative work in the civic engagement space.”

True to Obama’s aforementioned goals, a solid one-third of the leaders participating were under the age of 30. “Throughout my presidency, whenever I got down, whenever I got cynical, whenever things got tough, the one thing that I knew would always pick me up was when I met...young people [around the world] with that vision, and that talent, and that motivation, that desire to have an impact and make a difference,” the former president said in his opening remarks at the summit.

That, he said, was the inspiration for his post-presidency plans of “creating a hub, a venue, a place, a network, in which all these young people across the globe and across the country, from every background and every race and every religion, [can] start meeting each other and seeing each other and teaching each other and learning from each other...not just to root themselves locally, but then be able to germinate and seed change all around the country and around the world.” With this platform, Obama hopes, “there’s no problem we [can’t] solve...no aspiration that we might not reach.”

It makes sense that the Obamas are leading this charge. “They have committed their lives to civic engagement and civic innovation, and this was long before they entered the White House,” Filipic says. “Mrs. Obama led a nonprofit here in the South Side of Chicago that was focused on empowering young people [and], of course, the president was a community organizer himself in his 20s. So it’s really core to who they are,” she says. “They are so authentic and so connected to these issues, that they are incredible motivators of others to think about how we can dig deep as individuals, but also come together as a community and recognize that collectively we can do so much more than we can do individually. And that’s really the spirit of what the summit is all about.”

But the Obamas aren’t the only ones consistently inspired by the next generation. Prince Harry, who, along with his brother Prince William and sister-in-law Kate Middleton, invests in youth around the world through the Royal Foundation, also sees their immense value in changing the world. “I get all of my passion, inspiration, and energy from young people,” he said during an onstage summit conversation. “It's an absolute joy and a privilege to meet the younger generation of changemakers across the world, who genuinely believe in the fact that they...not only can change their country, but can change the world as well.”