Last month saw the end of the Young Economic Summit (YES!) international competition. This entailed high school students from the UK, Hong Kong, USA, Geneva, and Germany taking part in group projects aiming to find solutions to global economic, political, environmental, and social problems.
The national winners received coaching and guidance from practicing economists working in the Health Foundation, and renowned consultants at McKinsey & Company before going onto the final hosted virtually from Hamburg. Here the groups pitched their ideas to a panel of judges, including Britain’s Angus Holford of the ISER and Jonathan Cribb of the IFS, and answered questions about their innovative ideas.
Winners of the UK heat were Aylesbury Grammar School and St. Michael’s Catholic Grammar School who both addressed the topic of food poverty on children in the UK. The students of St. Michael’s decided to use policy, such as a food-waste tax, to fund and incentivise the redistribution of food going to landfill to those children that need it most. The group from Aylesbury Grammar had the idea of a universal basic income to ensure families had enough to provide for their children. Below are some sketches of the students’ ideas by the events cartoonist.
The competition was a huge success, engaging young minds across the world on inventive ways to combat growing global issues. We would like to give a special thank you to The Health Foundation, McKinsey & Company, and the FT for support with judging and mentoring at this memorable event.
We were happy to hear from students and teachers that they found this event beneficial too, with some students saying the following…
“YES was a fulfilling and intriguing delve into the professional world, with young people coming together from across the world in order to provide thought-provoking solutions to the world’s most significant problems. A fascinating experience!”
“A fantastic opportunity to make your voice heard”
We also heard this from teacher Kelly Clark: ‘’YES provided a wonderful opportunity for young people to work on a real-world economic problem and find a solution. The younger generation are the future and opportunities for them to have a say and share their wonderful unique insights into today’s issues is just invaluable. Thank you to the YES team for making this happen.’’
Good news, the YES event takes place every year, if you are interested in next years competition then please send us an email for more information at: info@discovereconomics.co.uk
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