Youth Meet of Global Shapers
The World Economic Forum has worked to engage young leaders to positively and proactively impact the global agenda. They have identified Young Global Leaders, who are under 40 years. They in turn have formed a new community – the Global Shapers Community for people under 30 – will provide youth with a global platform to shape the future – integrating the personal, community and global dimension. The Global Shapers (under 30) have formed a chapter in Karnataka. The driving force behind this is the charismatic VR Ferose who is the Managing Director of SAP Labs India. At 37, Ferose is one of the youngest Chief Executive of a Global Multi National Corporation (MNC) in India. The other co-founder is Sangeeth Varghese who ranked among the top 10, from the Harvard and London School of Economics. He was nominated as a Young Global Leader 2010 by the World Economic Forum, Davos and was honoured as the first Asian Youth Ambassador by the government of Libya.This year 192 people were chosen across the world as Young Global Leaders (under 40). Ferose is part of this list of YGLs from India. The list includes people such as Dr Ashwin Naik who launched Vaatsalya Healthcare, a network of secondary care hospitals in Tier II and Tier III towns in India. Other winners include Fatima Bhutto and the behavioral economist Sendhil Mullainathan from Harvard who talks about a tricky set of social problems — those we know how to solve, but don’t. We know how to reduce child deaths due to diarrhea, how to prevent diabetes-related blindness and how to implement solar-cell technology … yet somehow, we don’t or can’t. Why? Listen to his talkOn 24th March 2012 SAP Labs India, at its campus in Whitefield, Bangalore, played host to the launch of Global Shapers Karnataka, an exclusive community established by the World Economic Forum to recognize exceptional youth with extraordinary achievements in their 20s. For the 250 youth from across Karnataka, selected to attend the event, it was a great opportunity to learn and interact with a diverse set of speakers. What differentiates this event from other youth leadership summits is that the focus would not just be inspiring conversations, but actual result-driven empowerment. For example, we have already collated a database of 25,000 deserving youth, who would be given access to opportunities like scholarships, jobs, internships etc.I had a chance to meet so many of these global shapers. <click link> yesterday. It was inspiring to see so many of these people actually do something to make the world a better place. I had a great conversation with Rajeev Gowda who teaches Policy at IIM-B. Both of us spoke about going beyond formal education. Today much of what schools and colleges teach by way of information, knowledge and skills is available for free on the Net thanks to sites like MIT's Open Courseware (http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm), Salman Khan's initiative at Khan Academy (http://www.khanacademy.org/). It is perhaps time to rethink what is the purpose of education. Is it merely to create employability or to take it to the next level and teach people how to drive social change. Maybe simple things like making the office premises of corporates available for people who seek to train others is a good starting point. Ferose has thrown his SAPLabs premises open to 400 bus drivers who come together to increase their literacy and awareness over weekends. Maybe we all can design and drive "Curiosity Labs" in our neighborhood to explore and immerse ourselves in new experiences and speak to people who lead lives different from what we see around us.Maybe you can replicate the Human Library Project. In this you can meet a person who is a living book. A Living Book is a person, that has chosen to be a public representative of a certain group. An example of how people can be, if only minds are open long enough to find out, who and what they really are. But before anything else, they are courageous people that stand by their convictions and are willing to discuss their values with others. As in books are most, they are wise. To mark World Book Day last week, Crisis and other charities held a day-long 'human library' project, part of a growing movement in the US and Europe. Instead of borrowing a book, you borrow a person.Check out this video <click here>What I learnt from the Shapers yesterday was their philosophy. Don't just accept the world with its problems - shape it.