Hi all,
After a whirlwind week, we have finally arrived back to the
US from the beautiful Johannesburg, South Africa where seven of us (from
Arnold’s Boston and New York offices) attended the 2013 One Young World summit.
The Havas Worldwide delegates (7 of us from Arnold)
One Young World is a youth leadership summit held in a
different host city each year. Its aim is to bring delegates from around the
world together to talk about world issues that affect all of us (keyword
“all”), with the hope that delegates will leave feeling motivated and inspired
to bring change to their own communities – and trust me, they do. This year’s
summit brought in over 1200 delegates from 190 countries, only second to the
Olympics in terms of global participation – pretty incredible!
Opening ceremonies at the "Soccer City" stadium
Because of the amazing initiative founded by Havas’ own Kate
Robertson and David Jones, One Young World also draws in some incredible
counselors to aid in the conversation and shed light on an array of topics
based on their real-world experiences. I may be biased, but this year brought
in the most INCREDIBLE group – everyone from Jamie Oliver to Arianna Huffington
to Paul Polman to the infamous Sir Richard Branson…and many more!
Arianna Huffington, a 2013 counselor. (photo compliments of One Young World)
The summit was broken into several sections – Plenary Sessions, Q&A Special Sessions, Internal and
External Breakout Sessions and Networking
Opportunities. We covered topics like Education, Youth Unemployment, Gender
Equality, Global Business and Leadership & Government all in five short
days. By nature, the summit provides many opportunities for delegates to voice
their own opinions and experiences, while interacting with the counselors,
ambassadors (previous OYW participants) and other fellow delegates. Throughout
the plenary sessions, delegates were asked to vote, via handheld devices, on a
wide variety of questions so we could see the range of opinion (or collective
opinion in some cases) in the room in real time.
I went into the summit extremely interested in the focus
areas of education and youth unemployment, as I conducted much of my previous
volunteer work around these pillars. What I saw and what I heard was truly life
changing. One delegate speaker, Carlos, utilized the movement of social media
to help fuel the conversation around education but also the power of the English
language. Along with a core group of supporters, Carlos started the first
social networking site to connect and educate people in South America around
the subjects of communication and language starting in bars, cafes and other
places that the South American youth congregate. Brilliant! Another speaker
created a website for travelers with specialty skills to connect with teaching opportunities
of these skills at their final destination (called Teach Surfing).
The Youth Unemployment plenary and breakout sessions largely
focused on the power of entrepreneurship and the role that big businesses can
play in empowering their employees and their communities to help create jobs. I
found connections between my breakout session workshop and advertising, which I
wasn’t expecting. In our workshop, we were asked to identify our core target
audience, their mindset, their lifestyle and their spending habits and from
there, create a business model to help increase job opportunities and business
growth in rural poor and urban poor areas. To me, this exercise was much like
the creative briefs we generate each day and it changed my approach to tackling
the problem.
It goes without saying, that the week was filled with
moments of fear, joy, sadness, motivation and inspiration as I watched just a
sampling of our population come together to support each other and our
individual communities. The One Young World community is by far one of the most
impressive groups of people I have ever come to know and I feel blessed to have
had the opportunity to participate and now, give back. We have no idea what we
know and what we are capable of until we transform our thoughts into actions.
While not every facet of life is sustainable, our capacity for excellence has
no limits, no expiration date. It begins and ends with our generation and after
this year’s conference, I feel an overwhelming sense of calm in knowing that. And
while we are in good hands, it’s time to get to work.
- Angela Tisone, Marketing Producer
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