One Young World Summit Engages Youth from 170 Countries

As the world at large moves toward global communalism, youth from all corners of the Earth recognize, despite our differences in nationality, ethnicity and statehood, that many of our home countries’ problems are interrelated either directly or indirectly to the plight of others. At the annual One Young World Summit in Zurich, young students and professionals from 170 different countries gathered for a three-day conference to discuss six pressing issues including but not limited to: global health, the environment and global business. In addition, special topics were discussed in between the six primary, plenary sessions.

The goal of the summit is to drive the world’s youth into a new era of leadership where we work together to solve major world issues via philanthropy, revolution and innovation. Delegates are encouraged to participate and found impact projects that hold to the resolutions adopted by the summit. These could include creating a non-profit organization, donating time and effort to disaster relief or partnering with corporations to sponsor projects that will enhance civic engagement in improving conditions in developing countries.

The delegates from all of the countries, as well as ambassadors from last year’s summit in London, were able to share their experiences both domestically and abroad as they related to the plenary topics.

Keynote speakers and counselors who were experts in the topics discussed aided in spurring conversations amongst the delegates to show us both problems and solutions and to establish a forum for the founding of new ideas. Most of the speakers were high-profile, including the Crown Prince and Princess of Norway, Jamie Oliver, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Fatima Bhutto (daughter of Benazir Bhutto, the assassinated first female prime minster of Pakistan).

I attended the second annual summit this year as a representative of my employer, PNC Bank, and as one of approximately 100 people chosen as delegates to the United States. Thirty of us represented the City of Pittsburgh. (Pittsburgh, in fact, will host the 2012 summit, but I will speak to that more in another blog post).

Though this summit does not exactly coincide with my general political disposition and ideology, it was important to approach the summit with an open mind. I agreed wholeheartedly with many of the points made, while with others, I strongly opposed. The beauty of the summit was that there were 1,300 people within my age range available to help me understand why they held the beliefs that they did.

I was able to hear about their country’s struggles, be it at the hands of an oppressive or even violent government or due to conditions such as famine and mass poverty.

This blog will be continued and broken down topically so as to cover the different aspects of this conference. There were aspects that were well-executed and others that warrant improvement, as well as items in the discussions that I felt passionate about or fervently opposed.

I hope that the summary provided here paints a portrait well enough to set the stage for the information to come.