The world is younger than ever before: currently there are 1.8 billion people between 16-30 years

We do not realise it, especially as young people ourselves, but there is such power, beauty and force in the blessed unrestful energy of youth. Our actions, education and work are meant to reflect and tap into that power to channel our energies and empower those around us to channel their own.

But are we really doing this? And are we allowing others to do this, as well?

It is this question that prodded me to explore new platforms and ways to exchange ideas, learn new perspectives and engage in meaningful dialogues and conversations aimed at sustainable development and social impact.

The World Bank Youth Summit in Washington DC and the UNLEASH Social Innovation Lab in Shenzhen China allowed me to see what the future of development meant in two different contexts.

The UNLEASH Social Innovation Lab gave me a platform for co-creation and collaboration for the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The Innovation Labs gather 1,200 talents from around the world to undergo an intense innovation process to solve these SDGs over a period of less than a week. The challenge here was to identify ‘blockages’ to pipelines. There is no dearth of solutions to complex development challenges in the world today – but why does a particular challenge exist? What was the ‘insight’ or the ‘block’ in the pipe of thinking that perpetuated the issue, despite so many efforts to solve it? It is this process of thinking – human cantered design thinking – which UNLEASH taught me. I was tasked with tackling SDG 6 of Clean Water and Sanitation, and was chosen to solve the SDG sub-theme of sanitation and waste treatment. After the orientation, we were allotted in random groups based on our topic interest. Complete strangers – from completely different backgrounds – we were now a ‘team’. My team consisted of an urban planner in New Delhi, a social-impact consultant based in the US, a health policy student in Singapore, a social entrepreneur from Kenya and – me.

Over five days, we were guided through the social innovation process by facilitators who had an expertise in water, SDGs and development consulting. The process involved stages of problem definition, ideation, testing, prototyping and implementation. At the end of much intense, hard work, I am proud to say our team won out of 150 teams in the Water and Sanitation SDG and were chosen to present at the ‘Dragon’s Den’ – essentially a ‘shark tank’ with five expert judges and an audience of 5000 people. Proud to say we won gold there as well! But more than the prize or the laurels – what is most memorable for me from UNLEASH is the team. How at the end of five days, complete strangers became family, all fired to implement the solution we had just come up with over five days, and motivated to really change the world and help people.

So, what was our solution?

A poop-card.

To solve the problem of open defecation in India, our team came up with a poop-card with RFID technology to motivate urban dwellers to use the restrooms that were constructed for them. Why would they motivated to use this? The poop-card was linked to a digital payment system which would provide points every time you used it. These points could be used to buy goods online – which would be provided by private companies we would partner with. Why would private companies partner with us? We would provide them with a user database of more than 1.8 million people (our target population was urban slum dwellers in New Delhi to start with). This model of using marketing dollars rather than CSR funding would drive our model and help us to scale. Cool eh?

After coming back from China, two weeks later, I went to the World Bank Summit in Washington D.C. There, I was selected due to my project proposal on skills training for the Fourth Industrial Revolution. While the energy of UNLEASH was vibrant, diverse, fun and thronged with 1200 talents, the WBG Summit was much smaller, arguably serious and intimate. It allowed for more collaborative dialogues and intimate conversations for ideation. Needless to say, the schedule was jam-packed with over 24 speakers over just two days.

The focus of the summit was ‘Smart Cities for a Resilient Future’. How can we make cities more inclusive, sustainable and smart with technology? What are the ways technology in which can be used to solve climate change, disaster response and inequalities?

Why did the Summit focus on cities in particular? Because of the unprecedented challenge and opportunities cities bring. 4 billion people – more than half the global population – live in cities. Rapid urbanisation, along with a rising youth population in developing countries, brings forth a host of challenges, including unemployment, environmental pressures, infrastructure requirements and demand for a higher quality of life. Technology can help emerging economies leapfrog forward and potentially cater to these demands effectively. This is what ‘smart cities’ are about. As part of the summit, representatives chosen for the World Bank Summit were put in a similar ‘social innovation lab’ as part of the conference and were given the task of ideating, problem defining and proposing a solution for a hypothetical smart city in the sphere of energy, transportation and air pollution.

All in all, the summit expanded my perspectives of solving global problems and applying the theoretical and practical knowledge learnt during the MPA to real-world tasks. I think the biggest takeaway from both of these conferences and events would be meeting people and hearing diverse perspectives. It gave me an idea to what the current policy priorities are in the world, what experts think and most importantly, how to potential approach to addressing such complex issues in the first place.

I know we are usually inundated with work from the MPA, LSE Life and all that’s going on in our lives. But I would highly recommend you to go beyond your comfort zone – try new things you haven’t done and push yourself to explore, learn, travel and challenge. It starts with hesitation and doubt – I felt it too – but go for it. Take every opportunity the MPA and the LSE offers- with its events and conference – to learn, discover and grow. As I said, we may not realize it but there is immense power in just being one of the 1.8 billion young people out there. The LSE MPA students, our actions, education and work can effectively and meaningfully channel our energies to empower those around us and therefore channel their energies for the betterment of society,