The World Bank Group Youth Summit 2016 was held in the World Bank’s headquarter in Washington DC on 14th and 15th November 2016, attended by youth from 97 countries around the world. The purpose of the summit was to listen to the ideas of youth in reshaping education for future. The theme of the Summit was Rethinking Education for the New Millennium, with a focus on different themes including innovation in education, education in the crisis zone, gender equality in education and new skills required for the economy.
The Youth Summit 2016 started with a plenary session in which speakers from the World Bank Group, representatives from the nonprofit sector and government academia shared their ideas and current work they are doing to promote innovation in the education sector. At the end of the session, the participants also raised different questions and shared their ideas.
Throughout the Summit the attendees were provided with opportunities to participate and engage in re-thinking of education for the future. It was also interesting to see that most of the attendees were concerned about the specific main problems which their countries are facing including hunger, poverty and lack of access to education. The participants were encouraged to share their experiences and ideas through workshops which were also arranged as part of the Summit.
The subthemes of the workshops included:
• Innovation and Technology in Education;
• Skills for the New Economy;
• Gender Equality in Education;
• Education in Crisis Zones.
The finalists of 2016 Youth Summit Competition ‘Rethinking Education: Innovative Ideas to Transform Education’ presented their Pitches on the second day of the Summit. All of the participants had brilliant ideas and presented their ideas in a good way. The competition was won Natakallum and ROYA. Natakallum is an organization which connects refugees and American citizens in order to learn Arabic language by the US citizens and earn income by the refugees. ROYA is an organization based in Afghanistan which provides computer literacy and English language courses to the marginalized children who otherwise cannot afford such facilities.
It was a great experience to be surrounded by youth from different backgrounds with brilliant ideas who care about making the world a better place to live by educating all the children.
