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Presenting the young leaders already shaping education today

The Education Futures: Shaping a New Education Story program saw a number of stakeholders from across the board come together to engage in discussions about how to look at and revitalize education, as we envision education systems that are transforming in the context of an ever-changing world.

Key to these engagements was the voices of the young people present in the program, who offered critical feedback and shared their hopes and aspirations, and spoke to how the work they currently do is leading them in the directions they envisage for the future of education.

Jorina Sendel, 21, is a board member at German organization, Lern-Fair, which provides free tutoring for students all over the country. She has been involved with it since its inception in 2020. This initiative ties in with her goals to see a more accessible education system, where education can be given to all people fairly as a tool to help them progress in their lives. “Hopefully people can consider that people have really different backgrounds. And the way we transport this tool towards people must be different, due to their different backgrounds,” she said. While her work is changing lives, she wants to see it evolve so that instead of it dealing with problems in the education system, it treats “the origins of the problem a little bit more.”

For 23-year-old Hugo Paul, the goal is the same: accessibility. “It’s great to have more and more innovation, but it needs to become more available in a public way,” he said. A member of the Youth Council of the Learning Plant Institute in France, Hugo is a proponent of emphasizing youth consultation and involvement in decision-making at an organizational level across the board, to highlight youth voices. Beginning September 2021, he will set out on a one-year journey to study and draw from learning communities across the world, in places afar as Greenland and Nepal.

Jigyasa Labroo, 30, is leading a revolution in India, encouraging children across the country to use creative visual and performance arts as a means to build confidence, through the organization she co-founded, Slam Out Loud. In her own words, Jigyasa’s work is” re-imagining what artistic education that enables children to find their own voice can look like.” Her approaches are leading her to what her hopes are for the future: “education that considers the voice and spirit of a child is no longer perceived as radical, where learning and joy come before knowledge and certifications.”

And across Austria, Switzerland, and Germany, Eva Keiffenhein, 29, is supporting first-generation students through her NGO, Speed Up, Buddy. Eva, who is based in Vienna, supported Big Change in co-authoring the New Education Story, and dreams of a future where children maintain their “innate love for learning.” For Eva, acknowledging schools as “learning ecosystems” will better foster children into living their true potential. “I envision schools that don't separate children by age, that acknowledge different kinds of knowing and knowledge beyond our rational thinking,” she said.