Author: Challenge Future Team
Photos taken by: Matej Kolakovic
Bled (Slovenia), 16 March 2012 – A group of 80 exceptional young, innovative and socially responsible individuals from 38 countries will come together for the second Challenge:Future (C:F) Summit held at IEDC-Bled School of Management from 16-21 March 2012 under the patronage of UNESCO. The Summit serves as the pinnacle of all activities and projects of the C:F global youth think-tank in 2011-12, whereby more than 23,500 youth from 213 countries and territories created 1,469 innovative ideas, invested 210,000 volunteering hours into their implementation, and improved lives of 270,000 children, youth, and adults worldwide.
Under the central topic of the Summit »Towards Smart, Sustainable and Inclusive Future«, youth under the age of 30 will come together with educators, business and political leaders to consider pressing challenges facing the world today, including the global youth unemployment crisis, social entrepreneurship, challenges in education and the role of business in society and to share their solutions. Besides the honorary speaker, President of the Republic of Slovenia Dr. Danilo Türk, the C:F Summit program will feature a number of world-respected speakers, including futurist Joel A. Barker, business strategist Deepa Prahalad, former OECD Secretary General Donald Johnston, entrepreneurs Riccardo Illy, Sandi Češko and other.
Challenge:Future is a global platform (with more than a million views), established to promote innovative and future- and nature-oriented responsible attitude and creativity of young people. In 2011, nine competitions and 94 sustainability projects were organized by Third Millennium Knowledge Lab in partnership with international management association CEEMAN and IEDC-Bled School of Management and with the support of numerous other partners, which will be presented at the five-day global youth Challenge:Future Summit 2012.
»Challenge:Future is a visionary project, based on the values that will create the future of societies, organizations and individuals. In this cycle, we managed to attract almost 24.000 youth from over 200 countries, who contributed 1.469 innovative ideas and improved lives of 270.000 people”, set out Ms. Andreja Kodrin, Founder and President of Challenge:Future.
The youth participating in the C:F Summit 2012 will represent 38 countries, including China, Russia, India, Venezuela, Rwanda, Canada, Sweden and UK. The participants have demonstrated a great potential for creating the future and are united by their drive to improve the world around them. The C:F community has an average age of 24, and its representation at the CF Summit will include a 22-year-old IT student from India, who has personally taught 300 slum children and developed new education platform for 300,000 children; a 24-year-old student from Germany, who engaged the management of more than 20 companies in Costa Rica in anti-corruption education; a 27-year-old medical postgraduate student, who created an NGO for providing jobs and community development for 34,000 people in South Nigeria; and a 23-old bioengineering student from Singapore with multiple innovation in sustainable food distribution, among many other great youth leaders. The Summit will give these young change makers a chance to connect, learn, and inspire each other – and offer an insight into the minds of global youth to business, political, and non-profit leaders.
»Challenge:Future is line with the mission of IEDC-Bled School of Management to develop creative, innovative, internationally oriented and responsible leaders that, besides business success of their organizations stimulate also sustainable development of the society at large. For CEEMAN association that currently brings together 202 business schools from 53 countries of Europe, Africa, Asia and Latin America, Challenge:Future is a new avenue for introducing the issues of sustainability and innovations into the business schools’ curricula in an interesting and interactive way, as well for strengthening collaboration between students and faculty, thus we were immediately enthusiastic about our collaboration with TMK,« stressed Prof. Danica Purg, IEDC-Bled School of Management Dean and President and CEEMAN President.
Challenge:Future Summit 2012 will consist of five interconnected events (detailed program is available here):
- C:F Academy – five-days invitation-only event, designed for top performing young change makers and leaders of the C:F community
- C:F Youth Forum with TEDxBled Inspire.Change.Impact
- C:F Educators Forum, co-organized with CEEMAN
- C:F Business Forum, co-organized together with the Young managers section of Management Association of Slovenia
- C:F Summit Gala under the patronage of the President of Slovenia, featuring key youth ideas and presentation of 2012 C:F Awards
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