Both eleven-year-old public speaker and change advocate Adam El Rafey, and Aastha Das, at 17-years-old the UAE’s youngest start-up founder and CEO, are proof of what youth can achieve when they receive a 21st Century education and are empowered by their parents.
When asked if he was “too young” to have given over two dozen podcasts and panels and participated in several global youth events, El Rafey, who was speaking at a panel on educational skills at GITEX, said: “The short answer is no. I have a mantra or mindset that says people should be given equal opportunities based on their capabilities and not just on the year they happen to be born in.”
El Rafey gave an example of an accelerator programme he wanted to participate in, which had a minimum age requirement of 14, so he found the director’s email and wrote to him making the case that he met all the necessary requirements despite his age. “I got accepted, had a really cool time and learned a lot, which again goes to show that we should be evaluated on our capability not age,” he said.
While parents’ encouragement is instrumental to such youth-success stories, the education system is also very important in equipping students with the skills needed to flourish in today’s digital world.
“We are still preparing students for the industrial age and the industrial age is over,” said Lachlan McKinnon principal at Cambridge International School.
“This is the information age so we need to start re-thinking our curricula, which is still theory-based instead of being application or process-based. The theory-based model silos all the subjects when we need to be joining them together and looking at cross-subject approaches,” he continued.
Das said it was the support that she received from her teachers and administrators, coupled with a well-rounded curriculum, that enabled her to launch her start-up SHERO Solutions, for which she won the Gen-Z Start-up Award at GITEX Future Stars Supernova Challenge 2019.
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