 Okay. All right. Good afternoon, everyone! مرحبا. السلام عليكم. I'm on the world of our millennial world. In this discussion, I feel a little bit out of place because we have a nice bunch of young people here, including Dr Amr. I'm not gonna bore you with any long introduction or any statistics. I just want to throw at you two numbers to keep in mind as we conduct this session. رضيا. هذا one of the youngest regions in the world. 60% of our population is under 25 years of age. So keep that number in mind. The other number is our youth currently constitutes more than 50% of the total unemployment in the region. This is another basic and important figure that we need to keep in mind. In this session I'm going to try to keep it as informal as possible لن نفعل about several key issues and answer some questions including how can we make sure the coming generations are equipped with the tools they need in order to face the many challenges ahead. Also, what role does leadership and governance play? And the third question, what kind of legislative environment we should have in order to implement the reforms we are looking for. To address some of these issues I'm honored to have a nice group of people here with me. We have three amazing young global shapers. Let me start with Iman. Iman Akbar Rafi'a who is a researcher in public policy at the D1 of the Royal Court in Oman and the founder of the Council of Omani Women Awareness Campaign. The Omani Women Awareness Campaign. She is also an advocate for education, employment and social innovation for capacity building. I also have Sharif Hamidi, he's Moroccan, an entrepreneur, a former investment banker and a strategy consultant. His main areas of expertise are corporate finance, economics and strategy innovation. Lately he's been focused on preparing the GCC countries for the fourth industrial revolution and its disruptive efforts on labor markets. We also have Tarek AlOlami, Tarek is from Bahrain who is the co-founder of 3BL Associates in Bahrain an initiative established to reimagine a more sustainable and regenerative Middle East. Tarek is also a climate change expert and is among the first 100 people in the world to complete a specialization, listen to this, in the field of biomimicry. And I thought international relations was an exciting major. We also have with us our two panelists, two prominent figures from the Arab world. We have Dr. Omar AlRazazaz, currently the minister of education here in Jordan. Dr. AlRazazaz, many of you know, has an extensive experience working with government, international organizations and the private sector. We also have Mr. Khalid Abdullah Janahi who is chairman of Vision 3 in the United Arab Emirates and vice chair of the Arab Business Council at the World Economic Forum. We have a lot to cover today and we have a limited time, so I would like to start. But before we listen to our speakers, I would like to conduct a quick ad hoc non-scientific poll. I'm going to ask the audience as well as the panelists to pinpoint, to single out one reform topic that you think is the most urgent to address. I'm going to, I have a list of four topics here. One, education and employment. Two, innovation and technology. Three, environment and natural resources. And four, governance and leadership. So I'm going to ask, if you think number one, two, three or four is the most important, most pressing issue that needs to be dealt with. So how many of you think that education and employment is the most urgent topic to be addressed in our region? Can we see a show of hands? Oh, vast majority, can we? Okay. What about innovation and technology? You already voted, so you can't do that. Alright. Environment and natural resources. Okay. Finally, governance and leadership. You can, yeah. So basically, I didn't take account, but I think education and employment comes as number one. Do you agree? Governance and leadership number two. Environment and natural resources number three. And innovation and technology number four. We, our colleagues at the WEF conducted a similar poll this morning, or yesterday actually, and today, over the, some of the social media platforms. And they came with similar results. The most pressing issues they found was education and development. 73% of people said that. 19% said environmental change was the most pressing issue. And only 8% said technology and innovation disruption. Can't blame it. Alright, so these are some of the figures I wanted to share with you. Now, let me go ahead and turn to our panellist, and I will start with Iman. Go ahead, Iman. Thank you so much, Mohannad, for having me. And I'd just like to start off with saying it's fantastic to see such young people as the majority on this panel. That is truly reflective of how and what the makeup of Mina region is. We have the highest weight of youth going through transition into adulthood at this point in time. And 28% of our population is between the age of 15 and 29. Which is phenomenal. And if you look at this in a competitive format and competitiveness and global economy that's fantastic. We are your assets. And we are that resource that you can use and reuse and we became sharper. And we don't deplete. But however, if you look at the context of our environment at this point in time the reality is very different. And I would like I'm quite pleased I have to say with the polls that we both took the week ago and the one you've just read because education really is the foundation of every single industry and sector that is going to propel our countries forward. So I really don't need to be here. I you all already have bought into the idea. So maybe I can start with sharing where almost the travesties of our region lie and if you look at our unemployment rate you spoke about that briefly it is at 30.6%. I mean figures are great but to contextualize that that is twice as more as the global average. And that's that's huge. And I can't tell you or say I can tangulize that or even begin to understand what 27 million people who are either unemployed not in training or not in education feel like every day. But what I can tell you as a person from the GCC is that I can share with you a story of a girl called Mediam 19 year old girl finishing public school coming out hasn't worked doesn't have a CV you know ambitious she's done well. Maryam wants to she wants to have the freedom to choose her future. Maryam wants to have security in her life and she wants to work. But where she sees this opportunity in the context of her culture and her environment is in public sector. So that's where she wants to work. Maryam goes to university she goes to a local university because she had local curriculum through K12. Now that's where she's competing and when Maryam comes out not having real life skills and she waits three years for a job. When she's leaving university she's coming into an economy that is welcoming her. This economy is not the economy when she left and graduated school. Fewer jobs in the public sector are available and they're getting less and less given the saturation of employment we have there. She and her colleagues are waiting up to three years for a job. I cannot begin to understand the emotion. They search for purpose that she's going through and the emotional distress in a crowded apartment with her parents and where she sees her future to be. Maryam cannot be the norm in our society and we cannot allow that. She needs to be the exception. We need to work with her and her constituency to change that narrative on the predominator and move that needle back to the green. I mean I would just like to conclude with saying that when people look back at this time and they look back at us and they say what is you know they look at our legacy they're not going to look at the how far we went in indexes they won't look at what our competitiveness was in 2017 or how much we grew in GDP. What they will ask us is how smart we were in navigating together this colossal asset of human capital that we have. And we can't do it without an equal participation of public and private sector with the main constituency which is the students to move that. So I'm hoping that we'll be able to navigate this discussion and really find areas that we could collaborate in. Thank you so much Iman. Definitely education is one of the issues that have always been at the center stage of our reform. However, I don't know what has been done to to change this system to reform education. Everybody talks about reforming education but when it comes to real results we don't see much happening. I'll go now to Sharif who will touch on innovation and disruptive technologies. Thanks, Moinid. Technology disruption the fourth industrial revolution. Boy, if only I had a penny every time I came across these buzz phrases. Whether you believe that this is a brand new, distinct industrial revolution or you feel that it's a mere prolongation of the previous one. I think we can all agree here that this phenomenon is all about exponential speed. The speed to acquire market share to take up new business is increasing exponentially. Two quick examples right here. By the time I finish this sentence a classic retailer would have lost 1.2 million dollars of revenue to an e-commerce platform. The telephone took 75 long years to acquire 50 million users. The internet, four years. Facebook, 2.5 years. WhatsApp, 15 months and Angry Birds, 15 days. Yes, you better believe it. By the same token businesses are dying fast nowadays. Back 50 years ago it took the average lifespan of the top 500 American businesses was 60 years. Now it's less than 18. Digital disruption means that we can no longer be complacent at all. We can either seize the opportunity and be game changers like Instagram, Netflix or we can watch our businesses disappear like Kodak or Blockbuster. But what does this mean for us? What does it mean for Mina? A large, diverse eclectic region like we mentioned, the region with one of the largest youth populations a region that has been labeled as the most important part of the world in the 21st century. But it is also home to many young women facing unemployment rates as high as 40%. It is also home to 50% of its children not meeting basic literacy and numeracy proficiency standards. Let me show you guys a little secret. Technology disruption does not wait for anybody. So Mina right now is at a crossroad. We can either embrace technology disruption and take advantage of it or we can just disregard it and watch our socio-political economic situation deteriorate. Being originally from Morocco I am familiar with this مروس غلومي بروزاك ستاعت that many of my people on the youth of our nations dawdle in. And at the end of the day it's just the situation is binary. We can either sit down and cry about the lack of resources or we can collaborate together while leveraging our resourcefulness. We can سبكتح our way through life and devolve our DNA into an amorphous hollow blob of blandness or we can actually push through difficulties and empower one another to rise and thrive. After all the purpose of life is to live a life of purpose. My grandpa he wants to ask me this he asked me شريف هل يمكنك أن تقلق؟ فلن تقلق بشكل جيد لكن نعم يمكنني أن تقلق فالأخي بسيطة جيد لأن من now on يمكنك فقط تقلق على أنفسك يجب أن تتبع على أي أحد لكنك ومينة اليوم يمكن أن تتبع ويقلق على أنفسك لتحصل على هذه التقنولوجية تسربت تحديد أن نحن بالتأكيد يمكنك أن تقول أننا نحن على الثلاثة ورغبات لكن أجل ما نحن still have a shot at this one في الحقيقة أدخل الثلاثة تقنولوجية ومينة تقنولوجية لذا أريدك أن تقلق معي أنا فقط تقلق هنا لأنها تقنولوجية لكن يمكنك أن تقلق تقلق بشكل جيد you know تقلق معي ويقول أنا أرى أصدقائي here you know أنا أقلق بشكل جيد so that's why they're standing تقلق معي ويقول that the that no no no you don't have to repeat with me I know تقلق بشكل جيد it's very contagious so no but really seriously guys say that our large youth population is not a liability it is a gift yes sure we may not have the most yes I agree thank you thank you thank you we may not have the most stable and most secure region but isn't the illusion of security what killed ambition let us not forget it is this ambition that allowed us to make this progress over the past 15 years including a 10% increase in primary access a 22% increase in adult literacy look we're all here today representing I'm going to take my seat back we're representing mean as most privileged but most importantly we're also representing mean as brightest and let's say most impactful so sure inspire me inspire one another share your stories over your success stories on social media outlets but most importantly share your mistakes share the lessons learned so that effective models and solutions can be transferred and replicated it is the only way for us to move from ambitious independent initiatives to a real visionary systemic change the Vinci said this I am impressed by the willingness or by the urgency of doing knowing is not enough we must supply willing is not enough we must do so let me ask you this can you count that's it thank you so much thank you so much very inspirational intro indeed let me move to Tarek before we hear from Dr. K. أمر and Mr. خالد their comments and their insights on what have been said thank you so much to build on Iman who is a policy maker from the heart and embodies enlightened consciousness and lifelong learning to heart and also thank you شريف who is the pastor at the church of the fourth industrial revolution I'll say amen to that so I'm going to add about 20 different more topics to the table and I'm going to do that by zooming out a little I'm talking more in a systems level so of all the regions in the world I think the Middle East Region is the one that needs to transform itself the fastest but also one that needs to reimagine itself I would argue more profoundly than any civilization has needed to do at any point in human history and I think that once we have created civilization today are the challenges we face actually confront our potential to prosper and not only in our generation and I say that that is a collective our generation but also generations to come I think the challenges in front of us is nothing less than evolving from society which lives in a way that is not actually compatible with life itself to a society that is fit for the future and a society of purpose and just to give you some context so yesterday we had an incredible conversation with fellow global shapers and we spent the day talking about the challenges in the Middle East Region but also more and potentially more importantly these solutions and many of the challenges of course came to the table there is a lot of synthesis over what was wrong and just to touch on the few we spend billions of dollars on arms that have the biggest security deficit we live in one of the most water stressed regions in the world but also have the high CO2 emissions per capita I'm threatening biodiversity and food security we have rising obesity and diabetes rates in the Gulf Region but then somewhere else in the region we have hunger and malnutrition we have the highest use of unemployment and also among the poorest in gender parity but also perhaps the greatest challenge we face and something I think our young global leaders embody as well is moral leadership and courage and values to lead and take us forward in the fourth industrial revolution and what was incredible is that even against the backdrop I know these immense challenges the way that young people face these challenges is one of hope of one that's saying that actually we still live in the most exponential abundant time that we've ever lived in that it's still the most exciting time to be a young person in the region that we can transform all of these challenges but there's a but but we can't do that alone now I think there's no case where any single person if you look at an issue like climate change no single person no particular gender no specific family or no specific generation is capable of solving these problems in silo and alone these types of problems that we talk about are deeply interconnected so what I found interesting is that I would have liked everyone to put their hand up for every single one of the points you mentioned because they're all part of the same I can talk about the environment and actually that is the core and the basis that gives us the resources to educate to employ and beyond and I think it's that interconnected approach that we're missing in terms of industries but also across across generations so I also and this is also an invitation you know the next time we also sit down in a circle like this it's not that you're out of place or I'm out of place we're all part of that same place and it's that ignorant of us taking it forward and I think to also take that forward we need a very different approach to our systems leadership Iman was mentioning the sort of global competitiveness and I'm a strong believer that in addition to global competitiveness we also need to start measuring our institutions and our countries by global collaboration indexes I think that it's not only we need to look at public private partnerships which are hugely important but also public planet partnerships us as human beings are not the only species on earth we need to be partnering with the over 100 trillion dollars in ecosystem services that nature provide us which is something that we can never match and employ and also for our civil society and I know we're very privileged in the room but also there's a lot of a descent and discontenting voices outside which need to be acknowledged I think for civil society that feels that maybe a living in more oppressive conditions it's also an invitation not to only go towards nonviolent resistance which has its place of course but also nonviolent resilience which is to take these frustrations that you have to say that I'm going to participate in the fourth industrial revolution but I'm going to be doing something about it and we're creating the new models and innovations that are going to make the old system obsolete and also just to finish on the last note it's important in all of our systems one to include our young people across every single level but more importantly to break away from the self-imposed silos self-imposed silos between generations between industries between ministries sort of within within government as well and I think looking at it also from a holistic perspective is nice to create the conditions that are conducive to life Thank you so much Tariq you're absolutely right all the points that I mentioned before are of equal not necessarily equal but are very important however it's interesting to look at these figures and see why people think that the environmental issues are not as important in this part of the world although they are in many parts of the world 19% only thought that the environment was a pressing issue to deal with so maybe you will touch on this at some later on Dr. Razaz go ahead Thank you it's actually hard to speak after three eloquent speakers who are at least I wouldn't say 30 years but I'm one of the best things about being Minister of Education is you're always invited to panels that have people from your generation so to speak the stories we have heard are both accurate about the reality and inspiring about the future we need to break away from Maryam's story we need to embrace the fourth industrial revolution we need to do all of these things that are collaborative that you are talking about how do we do that is the question somebody mentioned you've said it we've been talking about this for the longest time three things I want to emphasize just taking stock of the reality how do we change it and then something practical on the ground there's a term for our youth that's been invented for us and it's called the weighthood generation weighthood like childhood motherhood weighthood because this is a generation of waiting they finish high school they go to higher education without necessarily wanting to or knowing what they're doing in Jordan 47% of university students don't like their majors and have no role in choosing it 47% of so he can imagine then they graduate then they look for a job in the public sector and the public sector is not there anymore then they can't start a life they can't get married and now the UN treats the youth generation in the Arab world as from 18 years old to 29 years old where elsewhere in the world is to 24 years old so we've lost already 5 years of our youth's life because of this stalemate that we are in so what do we do we have to diagnose it's partly economic disenfranchisement it's partly economic our youth are not able to participate but partly it's what we are teaching and partly it's a narrative that is predominant fortunately it's not a monopoly over the narrative but it's a narrative about the other about the self about it's a narrative of hate unfortunately it's not predominant but it is there and we have to deal with it now we have to ask ourselves today so that we take advantage of the fourth industrial revolution what do we want of education education so far in the Arab world has been to stress creating clones of our students youth who are identical to each other who say the same thing when they're asked a question who answer the same way who think exactly the same way and this is part of our paternalistic culture but part of the third and the second and the first industrial revolution that wanted people who look alike because you had an assembly line and if you removed somebody from the assembly line you put somebody else who did exactly the same job the fourth revolution does not need that it needs individuals creative critical thinking can solve problems can work with others can think about how to improve something that they see in front of them the first question is how can I do better than what I see this is not what we are teaching so the first question do we want to repeat do we want to create clones of each other or do we want to encourage individualism individuality expression of talents of different ideas we always say Arabs don't read why is it we have to ask our questions I don't think this is genetic people read when they have a question in mind they search through literature for answers in our part of the world we have made most questions taboos either social taboos political taboos religious taboos science taboos even so unless we allow our youth to ask questions without fear so that they can reach a sense of belief within them now what do we do in policy terms today somebody said education is a generational change and indeed it is it's not a push of a button it's not gonna switch things around in a year or two changing curricula changing the way teachers teach it takes a long time however I don't think that means we shouldn't act on things now that have immediate short term results the reason I'm hopeful about short term results is our youth are aware of their potential all they need is a little bit of space for them to start expressing themselves so there are three things I want to mention one of them is and these are all sources of disruption one of them is technological the fact that now youth can learn on their own if you put the right instruments and the right media and access to so they can learn whether we say it or not whether the teachers like it or not they can learn so technology and beaming technology to the classroom and to the home and to their smart phones is key and it's a game changer the second is outside the classroom activities all the stuff that we are not able to put inside the classroom because our textbooks are so full and the time in the classroom and the relationship is so hierarchical if you take students out to the field volunteerism building things arts scouts sports you name it we will inculcate a lot of the values and a lot of the skills that will take another generation to put inside the classroom the third one is how we exam how we test our tests emphasize whether it's the 12th year high school exam they emphasize wrote memorization they emphasize the culture that we all have to compete along the same line and there's one number that will give us our value our sense of who we are there's a number that comes from the or from the high school exam that we do we need to disrupt that as well when we disrupt that teachers will start behaving differently students will take advantage of it and we can start to see results on the ground I think very quickly because I do agree with sheriff with sheriff that we can take advantage of the fourth industrial revolution because we are economies of scale and cheap labor are no longer the the key ingredients it's really trying to cater for very small needs and with a lot of creativity that's going to be the key going forward thank you Dr. Aumar for the informative introduction excellent points I wanted to ask you hopefully if we have some time at the end you mentioned education reform to make us more competitive to make us compete better in this world but there's also some people say educational reform that is needed to combat misconceptions to combat violence to combat terrorism and to combat all these issues that are pulling our societies down and preventing us from being competitive and from being better people maybe you will touch on this at a later state Mr. Khaled first of all thank you Iman for reminding because last night she told me that I'm going to be in this session without me knowing so thank you because I was very surprised that I'm in a session with these young people and young person here Ex-Minister Dr. Aumar because of what you said he's going to be an Ex-Minister in my book yeah now I remember 13 years ago Mohannad in the same place here when he had all his hair was black and I had less boldness than I have today okay the discussion was the same thing but luckily actually I remember I always when I was younger my younger days in any panel I used to say when the moderator said okay Mr. Jani I said well I am the youngest in this room so I'll be the last one to speak and luckily today I'm the oldest in this room and I'm the last one to speak so it looks like I'm keeping the last person thing going on it's very inspiring listening to the young and listening to you Dr. Aumar I mean you use couple of words some of my friends sitting around here they know those words hit me very very hard and I'll come to it towards the end but I think those questions that you raised about what reforms most important reforms that we got to look at I think what Sharif said what Iman said and what you said I think the environment is important education is important fourth industrial revolution is important and I think all that is going to come and we the young will take care of it and it will handle it however the environment I'm not talking about that type of environment we need to create the right environment I'm Aumar as the older people with the point of leadership and governance I think that is the criteria that for us the elder generation we need to create that environment for the young and the younger ones to come through and that would be actually changing I think you said critical thinking the mindset shift from the social contract in the Arab world from Morocco to the Gulf where we have the ruler and the subjects in whatever shape it is it's a kingdom it's a sheikdom it's a republic it is basically the ruler and the subjects we have to accept and we have to move to create the environment for these young people to achieve their inspiration to really come through is to change it from ruler and subject to leader and citizen and till such time I totally agree here in this room you said we are the lucky guys to be here I will not say we are the most intelligent people to be here there are a lot of intelligent people young and older people who are out who are suffering because they believe in this issue of citizenship and they don't sit around so let me just give you a story imagine someone in government be it a minister be it whatever he is he's earning around $3,000 a month no richness in the background nothing there he's not a new bourgeois because all of us in the Arab world if we have money we are new bourgeois so he's not a new bourgeois or inspiring and he does not have anything suddenly through 3,000 he gets out of the government and suddenly he has a bank account in Geneva of $150 to $200 million suddenly he builds a palace for whatever $15 to $20 million okay and he is not Zuckerberg he is not Gates he is not any of those who really created something he was not too entrepreneur who created something and he sold it and he made money and we know world where that money came from and we still champion that person that's what's happening and I do see that around even in this meeting thing here at WEF we still champion people like that and we know that the way things happened because that's the wealth of a nation it's not the wealth of individual it's not the wealth of the ruler or anybody else to play around with it so the citizenry becomes an important factor as long as we don't accept the citizenry to be the main thing for creating an environment you do whatever you want to say you can have all the beautiful industrial revolution the 4th, the 5th, the 6th whatever is going to come in I'm kissing somebody I'm getting this I'm really getting it because I have the right to get it I have worked hard so we have this vision 2030 in Saudi Arabia it's best on what? Equal Opportunities okay that's what it says reality is that's a lot of baloney because look at the people around it they have to accept it so what I'm getting at before before we ask people to reform we as reformers we have to reform ourselves when we accept as people at the top embezzlement when we accept extortion because I hate somebody and personal I allow it to happen and then the people around the cronies around that ruler or that leader or whatever you want to call it to keep people happy because you want to go back to Abu Dhabi I want to go back to Bahrain all of us want to go back where we come from but for the cronies the issue is not the ruler it's the cronies around them where if the ruler hates somebody and he wants to extort and be an embezzled person but the cronies around it intelligent people educated people who allow that to happen with all sorryness that's bad to come to it education is the most important thing but look at how much money we have spent since Mohanad you've lived it I've lived it actually in the last time that I was Mohanad in this part of 14 years ago or 13 years ago we were discussing the Arab competitiveness report was the first ever Arab competitiveness report who fills in that just imagine you as young people who fills in is the people who are already part of this thing here the big boys the big boys is to their interest to show that everything is rosy everybody gets the higher marks suddenly the Gulf countries are the top but when you really look deep down it's all shallow so I think it's very important that we recognize the problem rather than just go around the problem is what I always say we want to go to the cloud 9 going from the 6th floor rather than starting from the base so we got to start from the base in order that you young as much as was so inspirational to listen to you and allow so education is important but it has to be the right education billions and billions and hundreds of billions have been spent whether it's Saudi whether it's here or wherever we brought in Cisco we brought everybody in this part of the world to show a new type of education but all that is nonsense because the real education is to allow critical thinking to go in the heads of the young people coming up and the teachers because before you have the young people is the teacher and that's why last night actually we launched the Palestinian education trust which is specifically after one year of discussion because the government has nothing to do with it we as people as the trustees will make sure that goes through and it's not a question of scholarship I'm not sending people to universities we are changing the mindset of the teachers and the students in the country to create the jobs so as entrepreneurs the most important thing for an entrepreneur in the real world is critical thinking is to ask any question and get away with it there is no red lines there is nothing there you can ask any question which comes to your mind including is God there or not even that simple question you have the right to ask it whatever the answer is so the people have to be allowed to get that through they will get a job in the public sector they are going to get a job in the private sector or you will get a job by yourself so always you are going to create a job for yourself as an entrepreneur so creating the entrepreneurship mindset through critical thinking is the way of education it's not reading it's not changing curriculum it's like very close friend but taking the Quran out it might help or not but the issue is outside that it's not what you learn it's an open mind so I would say it is education it is leadership but we have no leadership there is a book which is coming out soon written by me hopefully it says the roadmap in the Arab world basically the roadmap from leadership to leadership once we have leadership we will be in a good shape for you the young and the other people coming through to go forward that's going to be very high price but we have to pay that price as the elder and the younger person here we have to pay the price in order that the young can come through thank you Khaled for a very inspiring and challenging is the inspirational person introduction do you have vacancies at V3 by the way yes yes don't worry we will go together alright and heaven can wait so don't worry about here we have around 15 minutes left I don't want to be asking the questions I want the panelists to be interacting with each other and take a few questions from the audience let's start with the audience do you have a question I think we have a mic here I'm Shai Mashaouishi Global Shaper from Tunisia's Hub so my question is really about education actually as Mr. Abdullah said the discussion has been 13 years now over the same problem no no it's been much longer so what takes so long because the gap between the education and the appointment it's a forever issue and we always having the same discussion we always having this same meeting but no concrete actions so why it takes so long when we see the other world it's already taken the education into a whole new level and to an online courses and to an open source education and we still in our universities path we don't have even the soft skills education into our courses we do not have like teachers are always teach with the same methods and leave the room without any even if I ask I don't understand this you what's the problem here why I think that's for you Dr.Razaz that's a great question and I think the answer is well let me split the answer into two globally the whole world today including the US and Finland are saying what the hell do we do now with all the changes that are happening so the disruption in the economy and technology is having an immediate effect on teaching everywhere so everybody is asking that question and there is nothing wrong with asking that question and again and again and again because the world is changing very fast but we have been sleeping on the wheel for the last four decades that's my own memory at least so maybe longer the question we have not our generation has yet to answer can we afford not to empower our youth that's the question if we can't answer that question that we can't afford not to empower we need to empower them economically but also civically and politically that's the way if we recognize then everything else is easy otherwise what we talk about when we say reform very often is we add the sentence here we take a chapter there but we don't we still have to get to a point where we trust our citizenry and that's your point if we trust then we empower then we change the way we think the questions we ask all of that we need to get to a point and quickly and maybe starting in education of including the youth in the debate including the teachers into the debate and holding people like me accountable for change this is how we then put a process of governance into place that says we're going to achieve this in 2018 we will achieve that in 2019 the decision has to include be very inclusive and then accountability has to be put in place otherwise we will continue to repeat I'm sorry we don't have so much time I'm really sorry thank you distinguished panel always good to see the shapers pitching in so my question is related to corruption now yes the smiles so since I might not be seeing many of you later for a while I just want to know generally from a structural perspective what can be done to reduce the economic impact of corruption and what can we do as young individuals to sort of elbow our way in and try to instill a new set of values in the way that the system operates excellent I think Khaled is probably the best to answer this now I just want to leadership through ethics and when extortion becomes legal you read these things of course we read these go ahead if I didn't like him I would have said actually his response to you at the beginning when he said this is a great answer and the official says to you it's a great question that's bad news but I like him a lot he's going to be an ex minister within 2 or 3 days no you see that's the reason because you want him now I think the red herring on this issue of corruption I think we put too much into the corruption issue I think before we talk about corruption because corruption is a minimal thing when you really think about it it is inefficient people that you put through when you don't put the true qualified people in the when I say rulers by the way I don't mean just the top but rulers in every element rulers at the top ministers directors at home your father your mother your teacher these are all rulers at business that is actually the system that we have in the Arab world whether we like it or not yes we have exceptions but those are only exceptions the reality is we are a bunch of rulers and we have subjects because we are subjected ourselves so we subject everybody else so I would say the inefficiency and I was actually mentioned and I think it's one of those you'll see it there that's what creates a problem you lose more economically substantial amount of money by putting the wrong person in the right place than the corruption itself corruption is minimal in comparison to that and the problem in the Arab world we have some specifically actually I would say in the Gulf the Gulf we have much much more of that where we have the wrong people in the right place you're lucky in Jordan you can put a lot of wrong people in the right place but they change quickly because they get blamed for it and they they go out but but I think we should not make too much of that the extortion element is important because that's what I was talking about earlier on and when you allow all these bunch of rulers and there was the top ruler who basically tells this guy I want this person dead okay and you do everything so everything basically what it means that everybody is there's somebody above the law you can write all the rules all the laws you have we have some beautiful laws in most of the Arab countries today it's the fourth industrial revolution in terms of the legality so we have all the beautiful legal words and the systems that come to application it doesn't work for some reason because it's always somebody above the law when you have somebody above the law you're already that is the destruction so for me it's not the corruption is basically something a situation which happens because of the wrong person in the right place because somebody is above the law because somebody above the law wants He wants whatever he wants I don't like you I like you I want to give you I want to take as I said when you champion somebody who is through corruption in in direct way but you champion that person you still showcase him you still put him there I'm sorry to say we and accepting this we are wrong we as people are wrong to accept that I'm talking us as Arabs so we always I don't blame the ruler I blame myself for accepting this situation we're in so all this element that's a big talk and I think it's something where the rulers they love this talk about corruption because it's a way شماع we've been used to the شماع القضية الفلسطانية for such a long time to sway us from other things and that's why we're not going forward that's why the critical thinking where my friend Mr. Hekma is here we always have fun talking about critical thinking but critical thinking is the real thing that we have to push and push forward okay great I think we have time for maybe one or two questions I would like them to be directed to the young people here does anyone have a question for them go ahead Hello this is Fadi Mikati from Tripoli Lebanon Hub I want to ask you guys the shapers and Iman don't you think that the millennials are a little bit overrated in terms of how do you think that the millennials are representing the youth of the Arab region we have the many influential people influential youth living in a very far neighborhood but they are not called millennials maybe they cannot we don't speak the same language they live in maybe urban areas or marginalized areas but we don't have a spotlight on them so how much do you think are we representing these youth thanks can you hear me if I understand your question correctly you're asking what are we doing as representative to represent people who are unrepresented is that correct that's a very good question and I think critical thinking mindset shift I'm going to be out of a job too if you're hiring let us know the fact of the matter is that when you talk about critical thinking and you talk about shifting the mindset you've hit the nail on the head and when you talk about teachers that's also the nail on the head when I talk about education I'm not talking about education for the privileged I'm not talking about private schools I'm talking about reforming education for the public schools for the people that are in the villages for the people that don't have access to what we have as Sharif said we represent the privileged so when I use the experience of Meriem and when I speak about mentality Meriem if she probably had critical thinking and she had the teachers that use different pedagogy and talked about career development she may have reimagined her life in a completely different way but unless we really institutionalize that in the education system and reform that critical thinking and that space to reflect and experience something different to the generation we were raised with we won't change the rhetoric so just to answer your question in short I think the way I personally do is to reform my areas of expertise and passion on employment education and capacity building and everything I do from my profession to my personal life is very much invested in that and I think as a community we do a lot of projects a grassroots in the global shapers and all of that is around really bringing young people and their great work onto the forefront okay we'll take one more for the young shapers hello I'm Philip Abu Zaid from Beirut Hub congratulations for what you have done the question here is all the initiatives come from the private sector from private people who are taking the initiative how can we create a platform on a governmental level in all the Arab countries that helps people who have ideas to create these ideas and to come to the light because we know there are many so this is the first question and second about Maryam that you are talking about we are talking about innovation but Maryam is still going probably to school with ten kilograms of bag with books so where is the change that we need we need practical change on the ground we are talking here great ideas but governments are doing nothing so how can we do this okay Shareef or Tariq would like to tackle this I can maybe jump in first first thank you for the question I also couldn't be with you more of changing the dynamics of sort of ruler and follower I would also say that someone like Maryam ideally would be from ruler to leader but then that leader is also a leader alongside Maryam that's the vision I hope to see I think when it comes to corruption when you look at things like again I'm from the climate change world I can see the corruption that's happened also relating to resources very clearly when it comes to negotiations with the industrial revolution is a transformation of something where rulership used to be based on also access to power to fuel and now fuel is becoming a technology it's solar Maryam will soon not have a lot of things on her back because a lot of that will be digital that will be online also what I think what Shareef was and I think as young people it's also using these tools a powerful generation that's ever existed in human history and I think all the shapers are embodiments of that and I think it's also our responsibility to go back and provide it to these most marginalized communities who don't have access as we do and give them that same power Shareef in 30 seconds please because we need to wrap up I think you're all the way in the back but I'm going to look at you in the screen over there again it's going back to that point that I said it's moving from just independent initiatives to actual systemic change reforms I've been here talking to a lot of global shapers I've met the top 100 startups and I see a lot of them strong powerful initiatives so I think really it's not so much we should not wait for any government we can have like just like how we had so many ideas from startups and artificial intelligence and whatnot we can have somebody who comes up with the product that connects the youth actually we don't even need the product just like I said instead of brag about your successes you're entitled to that but also share the mistakes that are learned to go back to that example that little girl trust me it's not even the 10 kilo backpack that's bothering her it's probably access to schools school is so far away from her just to throw in a little example in Morocco what we're doing we're recycling your old phones you got the iPhone 7 congratulations give me your previous iPhone and with that we put in a system of exploitation full of apps and education and then we give it to this young girl and see the impact as simple as that I get the lessons learned from this little venture right here and then I give it back to you in Egypt and Tunisia and then you try it your own way and that's how we build that network to reform okay I think I'm going to borrow 4 minutes from the WAF I want to ask each one of you to in one minute summarize what's one single issue that you can take away with you from this session alright the change you are talking about requires a broad coalition this is not something that can be parachuted by in any sense changes difficult is scary but the way to do it and the way we have been doing it in Jordan is to give voice and there was a question about how do we give voice to young people be accountable to that voice and build the support necessary at all levels there are NGOs and civic organizations that are doing amazing things in Jordan really incredible things the challenge for us is how do we scale it and the success story how do you scale it up at the level of government at the level of top leadership as majesty just wrote a paper 2 weeks ago about the importance of that sort of change in the sector of education so that the it is not seen as something that is outside the realm outside officialdom so you need that at the leadership level and it's happening at the government level it's we can't act in the ministry of education as a bastion with closed doors and windows we need to open up and become the core through which all these initiatives come in and we try things out and we build and succeed and scale up so it's mostly about governance and inclusion and voice of everybody one single take away change is going to happen either we ride it or it's going to walk over us and I hope we're going to ride it rather it's walk over us شريف I think it was very obvious that we can't hide the big elephant and I wrote it right here more agile and transparent governance models everyone we need to be able to compete on a platform on the same platform whether we're from Morocco we need to be able to invest in teachers so they can start facilitating and not telling us what we need to learn we need to start investing in career development and most of all I feel like the change that some of my colleagues here have spoken about and the impact that they're really seeking on the ground will need to come from a collaboration of the private and public sector because that model will need to change as we move forward change is going to happen it's also going to happen because of the decisions we're taking today I think it's a challenge for us as young people to educate also our elders to make them understand our perspectives I'm a big believer in lifelong learning I think also from these conversations I also invite them like Mr. Janahi also as a fellow Bahraini to also work together with Bahraini youth and I think we could use that type of wisdom and leadership not only in grassroots communities but also speaking of course truth to power and being able to have these honest and open conversations also ones that are based on trust but one that's also more on leader to leader that's based on mutual education well thank you all so much I think this was a very interesting discussion we needed another hour at least to cover everything but thank you all Dr. Raza, thank you for being with us Mr. Khaled Janahi Arif, Iman and Tariq thank you all for coming