New Delhi – Ashraf Patel, the only Indian woman to be recognised by World Economic Forum and Schwab Foundation as the Social Innovator of the Year 2022, takes the stage at Davos to highlight the need to invest in youth-centric development across sectors. The World Economic Forum (WEF) Annual Meeting 2022, is being held from 22-26 May in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland. The theme this year is History at a Turning Point: Government Policies and Business Strategies and brings together nearly 2,500 leaders and experts from around the globe, all committed to the “Davos Spirit” of improving the state of the world. As a part of the Annual Meeting, 15 Social Innovators from across the world were celebrated for their efforts to transform the world.

Ashraf Patel from India was recognised as one of 15 global Social Innovators by Schwab Foundation at the WEF Forum in January 2022 as Co-Founder, Pravah and ComMutiny – The Youth Collective. Speaking at the session ‘Transforming through Trust’ on 23rd May 2022, Ashraf called upon global leaders to invest in youth leadership at scale, by trusting in their abilities to address the most complex challenges that the world is facing in terms of inequality, conflict and ecological decline.

After nearly three decades of investing in building the youth development sector in India Ashraf, addressing global leaders and experts at the Annual Meeting, said, “Young people once trusted and brought into key and significant intergenerational decision making and dialogue spaces, not only bring alternative perspectives, but can help us challenge together, the status quo, bring out new innovations, entrepreneurship and spur tremendous social change action by being the change they want to see in the world.”

To work at scale with soul on youth leadership, Ashraf invited greater collaboration and solidarities across all sectors to realize the mission Every youth a Jargik, Every Space Nurturing Jagriks, where the Jagrik is a self awakened active citizen who inspires others. She highlighted the need to co-create such spaces with young people that nourish, love, learning, ownership, freedom and social hope.

Pravah, ComMutiny – The Youth Collective and the vartaLeap Coalition’s collective experience has repeatedly shown that young people are not leaders of tomorrow, but are leaders of today. As the COVID-19 pandemic threw up challenge after challenge, young people led from the front, investing time, money and heart in not just saving millions of lives but also in creating hope. Investing in youth leadership is not a saving for the future, it is an imperative for saving lives now.

While the Annual meeting is a coordinated effort to bring together all stakeholders to ensure a sustainable and equitable post-COVID era, topics ranging from harnessing emerging technologies for empowering the marginalized to systemic solutions for the world’s most pressing problems were discussed during the ‘Transforming through Trust’ session.

Some other speakers at the session included Hilde Schwab, Chairperson and Co-Founder, Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship and WEF; Hahrie Han, Inaugural Director, SNF Agora Institute and Professor of Political Science, Johns Hopkins University; Sam McCracken, Founder and General Manager, N7, Nike Inc and Sanjay Pradhan, CEO, Open Government Partnership.

In today’s deeply interconnected world, it is only through collaboration that all stakeholders can make a difference to transform lives. As shared by Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman, World Economic Forum, “The Annual Meeting is the first summit that brings global leaders together in this new situation characterized by an emerging multipolar world as a result of the pandemic and war. The fact that nearly 2,500 leaders from politics, business, civil society and media come together in person demonstrates the need for a trusted, informal and action-oriented global platform to confront the issues in a crisis-driven world.”