New Frontiers — Demo Day 2018
Excerpt from the closing address for demo day 2018.
We started Generation Entrepreneur with a simple premise: Let’s teach our young people that they have a big role to play in our world, that they have a place — right now — to make a difference.
This program had many firsts, many things that we are incredibly proud to have achieved: 77% female representation, high school students coming from Blacktown to Kirrawee — but what I am personally most proud of has been the insatiable optimism of our students. It has been a fundamental belief that at our core, despite our differences and varied backgrounds, we could come together and build a better tomorrow. It’s a belief that we could tackle the tough issues in our communities – that we weren’t going to wait.
I believe this cohort is done exactly that.
This cohort has been working on incredibly interesting problems— from financial education, to changing the way we shop online.
All before they can even vote.
And as we meet with these young people, we can’t help but wonder what might be next — what might happen at a program like this in 5, 10, 20 years?
I imagine a student from the Shire who discovers a new type of fuel, based only on sunlight, carbon dioxide and water; the teen from Bankstown who makes voting and youth activism as addictive as scrolling through your Facebook feed; the boy from Chatswood who discovers how to grow an artificial liver right in front of the Prime Minister, paving the way life saving organ production.
And I imagine some future Prime Minister strolling with a student who invented a new kind of telescope, and as the Prime Minister looks through the lens, the girl turns the telescope to a planet she just discovered, orbiting a faraway star at the very edge of our galaxy. Then she says she’s hard at work on another invention — one that will take us there someday.
These kinds of moments are closer than you think. My hope is that these students — maybe some of your children or grandchildren — will be even more curious and creative and confident than we are today. But that depends on us. We must continue to nurture the curiosity of our young people, we must embrace the youthful compulsion to race for new frontiers and push the boundaries of what’s possible.
It’s hard to fully comprehend what the impact of educating these young people might be — perhaps it creates more jobs, perhaps it teaches young people to go out of their way to help other people — but the scenario that I believe the most in, and which gets me the most excited, is that by empowering this young generation, we expand our imagination, we are emboldened to take on more daunting challenges, we are inspired by their example.
So, parents, let’s continue to encourage our young people to explore their passions.
Our schools, let’s continue to teach them what they need to create their own futures.
Our friends in the industry, let’s continue to provide them with the resources to enact the change that they want to see
If we do, I’m hopeful that tomorrow’s Australians will be able to look back at what we did — the diseases we conquered, the social problems we solved, the planet we protected for them — And they will take a chapter from our book, and write the new chapter in our great Australian story.
And so when people ask me — are you sure our young people have what it takes?
I confidently say: ‘Yes, of course — I’ve seen it myself.’
Generation Entrepreneur is a non-for-profit that hopes to empower the next generation to change the world. Check us out here https://generationentrepreneur.com.au/ or our Facebook page here: https://www.facebook.com/generationentrepreneur/
