Words by Irene Dominioni, illustrations by Mélody Da Fonseca, photo by Pangea
From June 8-10th, 2016, there was a very unconventional meeting happening in Madrid, Spain. It takes the name of Unleash, and it was designed to celebrate young potential in all its forms. Constructed in the form of inspiring talks by a number of the brightest young people from all over the world, a networking space and a series of live performances, the key words in the participants’ minds (all below 25) were “passion”, “vision”, “courage”, and “endurance”.
As young people around the world, nowadays, face many struggles in finding their place to be, the key message that was delivered over the three days was to awaken young people’s consciousness that they can, and have to, pursue their dreams, regardless of anything. Around the theme of entrepreneurship, many young talents and entrepreneurs displayed their stories of success, from Abdallah Absi, CEO at Zoomaal, the leading crowdfunding platform in the Arab world, to Daniel Gomez, co-founder and CEO of Solben, a company that designs and manufactures a press that extracts oil from plants to produce diesel fuel, in the effort to deliver the message that being young is no obstacle, but rather an opportunity.
Unleash was organized by Pangea, the first global platform that seeks to awaken, empower and connect the huge and diverse talent of today’s young generation. Founded in 2014, it was born as a response to an increasingly interconnected, global and diverse world, where the vast majority of young people lack of a set of opportunities, people and initiatives that enable them to realize their dreams. Pangea was founded by Pablo González Ruiz de la Torre and a group of international young people “as we were feeling so underestimated because of our age”, says Pablo. The feeling of exclusion and impotence in a (western) world in which it is increasingly hard to find employment and stability for the future, to become economically independent, and even to be optimistic, Pablo and his friends did not want to keep their head down: “That is how we created Pangea, to change the role that young people play in the transformation of the world, by democratizing talent and starting a youth revolution on a global level”, Pablo adds.
Pangea seeks to position itself as a global movement, although it was born in Spain. Which is alone a difficult country for youth, with one of the biggest youth populations in Europe, 7,508,876 people, an unemployment rate of 54,6% and a share of early school leavers of 21,9%. Numbers that, today, are worrying, considering that the European Youth Strategy, lasting from 2010 to 2018, aims at tackling the problems of its 90 million population aged 15-19 with two main objectives: offer young people new and equal opportunities in education and job market, and encourage them to take active part into the society.
The situation for youth in Europe is not only critical in a country like Spain. The last EU Youth Report, dated September 2015, presents a full picture of the situation of young people in Europe over the past two years according to a number of indicators, ranging from education to work, health, participation, social integration and so on. The negative picture that arises from the report suggests that, indeed, challenges for youth are widespread in the continent.
By 2020, the EU’s target is to decrease the share of early leavers from education and training to less than 10%. Some improvement has been achieved overall, but today the percentage is still above 15% in Italy, Spain, Portugal and Romania. The unemployment ratio of young people aged 15-29 has increased over the past years, with the worst percentages registered in Spain (54,6) and Greece (57,9). Participation in amateur artistic activities has decreased to 30% in 2015, and only 3% of young Europeans participate in international youth cooperation activities. Finally, participation by young people aged 15-30 in activities of a political organisation or political party or a local organisation aimed at improving their local community and/or local environment decreased to 16% in 2015.
The main assumption that we can derive from these statistics is quite straightforward: it is challenging not only to provide young people the opportunities that they need for their personal development, but also to get them involved.
Pablo Gonzalez, founder of Pangea, replies: “In the EU youth is not seen as proactive as it used to be. But the reality is that we are the most proactive generation ever, the difference is that we do things in a different way, and that changes everything. I think that the most important thing is not to empower people to be proactive, but to create an open ecosystem where you can get people, organizations, ideas and opportunities that young people can take advantage from themselves”.
Pangea works through three main pillars: Spark, which comprehends events such as Unleash, designed with the objective of awakening the potential of millions of young individuals all over the world; T.LAB, a global open transformation platform that aims at propelling the digitalization of every kind of corporation through the vision of young talent; and the Community, which aims at connecting young people in a global network. Pangea has, until now, created programs and opportunities to enable young people to be a driving force of transformation, through challenges organized by companies in which young people can help them solve problems with their business, acceleration programs for young entrepreneurs, events to connect startups with big corporations and public administrations, a festival for youth employment, and many more. At Unleash, Pangea launched Trivu, designed to be the first certificate recognizing any project being founded and run by young people.
At times of strong uncertainties and disenchantment for many young people, the growth of Pangea is a comforting sign. It suggests that young people can get involved constructively when they have a solid network to rely on. When opportunities are scarce, one needs to reinvent themselves into new projects, mindsets, and goals. In the shape of a grassroot movement, Pangea represents the effort to bring forward a change for youth that has to come from below, when it does not come from above. “The world will change when you change it”, says Pablo, and, indeed, as long as young people will have a chance to get into concrete networks to share and build together, both for themselves and their communities, this way of thinking will be reinforced. And, if it does not ensure a change, it certainly increases the likelihood that it will happen.
