How Important is Education and Innovation and What Does This Mean for Our SDG’s?
By +SocialGood Connector Ashley Bass
Emmanuel Nyame, Co-founder of Social Good Ghana, and +SocialGood Advisor, and Hans Vestberg, Verizon Chairman and CEO, spoke about the importance of education, innovation, and the SDGs at this year’s Social Good Summit. Emmanuel kicked things off by talking about the importance of giving youth a chance to learn new skills, and highlighted internships, mentorships, and on the job training as key experiential learning opportunities that each young person should have.
“We can not move forward without technology,’’ said Emmanuel onstage. He further expanding on this idea, saying that we should believe in technology and leverage it to reach more youth.
Emmanuel then asked Hans what about peoples responsibility to drive social change, regardless of running a big organization or small organization. Hans argued that everyone can create change. This can happen through everyday behavior — even though it might not be a big thing; everyone can do something.
Hans, then asked, “How can youth talk to us (large corporations)?”
Hearing from a senior leader that the door is wide open and that a company as large as Verizon is open to hearing ideas from young people, is certainly a breath of fresh air, however identifying and securing your seat at the table to even share your idea can be the hard part.
Emmanuel argued that it’s on us (youth) to know the way to reach out to large organizations. Youth have to gather the courage to approach leaders such as Hans at events. He did admit that often times youth wonder how they can get people like Hans to supportive their initiatives: “It’s easy to meet you. How do we reach out to you after? What happens after I take your card..will you respond to my email?”
Their discussion posed a series of challenging and prolific questions. Hans suggested young people think about which companies would have similar goals to theirs. Missions or initiatives that are a good fit and have similar strategies to companies will do better when they reach out to those companies.
The conversation was great as it felt very organic. As an audience member it was almost like watching a ping pong of energy and ideas move from one person to another, as they posed questions and offered advice throughout the conversation. I left the crowd feeling inspired, and very proud to be part of the +SocialGood community. I look forward to partnering and collaborating with the fellows in the 2019–2020 +SocialGood Class of Connectors.
