The year 2020 was a challenging one. We saw firsthand that the world was a globally interconnected space where an event in one place can quickly become breaking news in another. We understood the importance of institutions and the role they played in unifying the world towards a common goal. We witnessed the rise of leaders to the occasion of the 2020’s health challenge. What we saw was insightful, yet troubling.
Much unlike the unison advanced by the recent global health challenge, there is a growing disconnect between young people, leaders, and institutions. In a world of interconnectedness that turned the entire world into communities of people, there is a widening gulf of distrust, cynicism, and rebellion. This disconnect is the fuel behind the raging fires of protests, riots, and civil disobedience. Young people are no longer trusting.
There is a reason young people are no longer trusting. We were born merely few decades ago for the most, some of us a little over a decade – and we have been eye witnesses to the depreciating level of competence within the systems we live in. We have observed the nonchalance with which many leaders have handled their responsibilities towards their people. We are appalled by the corruption within institutions, the backstabbing, the nepotism, the lawmakers fighting, the outright lying, and the hypocrisy behind many policies of state. We have been watching. We have also been hoping that these farces were but for a time and would surely pass away. We hoped that somehow leaders and institutions would finally get it right. But we are growing up, and the world doesn’t look like it is getter any better. This disappointment cuts deep.
The trust is broken. When leaders who are meant to serve and protect turn around to bully and attack their most energetic population, how can we trust our leaders, still? When institutions created to provide education, health care, and food become lackadaisical, uncaring, and hoarders; how can we be expected to trust these institutions, still? There is no trust. That trust that our leaders have factored our demographic into the scheme of governance has been severed. The trust that our leaders will do what’s best for the education of the largest population of young people ever to be in the history of the world is a lost hope. That trust that institutions will pursue the cause for which they were instituted has turned to laugh us in the face. How can we live, therefore, with such level of brokenness?
This question echoes the despair existing in our world today. There is an obvious need to rebuild the trust between young people, leaders and institutions. There is a need to address the problematic areas to make meaningful actions that show sincere commitment to giving the youth a voice, providing young people with modern opportunities for growth and development, and enabling a sustainable environment for youth in governance.
It is my honest hope that there will come a time that we can hold our leaders and institutions in high admiration for a job well done. Interestingly, we are here to bring in that time. By our simulations and projections, and a unifying commitment to the trust challenge, we can create a world of solutions that fast forwards time to the ideals we hold so dearly.
Thank you.
