Adaptability: The Skill for Change

“We have the skills, resources, and technology to address the challenges the world faces today”

By James Sancto, Co-Founder & CEO, We Make Change

World Youth Skills Day celebrates the importance of equipping young people with the skills for employment, decent work and entrepreneurship. This year’s theme focuses on ‘Reimagining Youth Skills Post-Pandemic’. We Make Change Co-Founder & CEO, James Sancto, analyses and pays tribute to the resilience and creativity of youth through the crisis and how together we can create the world we want to live in.

We are the largest, most connected, and most highly educated generation ever. We have the skills, resources, and technology to address the challenges the world faces today. Yet the scale of the challenges the world faces today often make us feel helpless.

That was made all the more apparent by the pandemic. Suddenly we were thrown into a world where we couldn’t do what we had taken for granted - be with friends, travel, or simply share a meal. Yet we were enabled to do what many of us have wanted for so long - work from home, study from anywhere, and maybe have a bit more free time.

And for many young people, this acceleration to a new world of work and study has forced us to do what we do best - adapt. We’ve been told for years that everything is changing so quickly that we’ll need to learn a range of skills rather than one vocation, have multiple careers rather than one profession, seek several income streams rather than one position. The pandemic has accelerated that reality.

Some of the changes during this time have been welcome - from more flexible working to a greater appreciation of mental health. They were just a result of conditions we would never have wished to experience - from the loss of so many lives to the isolation of our social lives.

As we look forward, adapting to this change teaches us lessons about the change we may wish to create and the world we may want to live in.

Adapting to change

The key skill many young people have is the ability to adapt. We may never have been taught how to use a mobile phone, we just picked it up. The same goes for Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat and other social media - at least for some. As soon as the new ‘thing’ comes along, we’ll do just the same.

It’s a skill that’s often undervalued in a world that values sheets of paper over life experience. Because unfortunately systems change slower than institutions do, and mentalities change slower than reality does. The monumental shifts we have seen over the last year or so have only been a consequence of catastrophe.

Creating change

That is why so many young people are forging their own way. In a world that neither lives up to our expectations nor aligns with our beliefs, some are creating a new path.

Across the world thousands of young people are launching their own Social Enterprises whose purpose is to make impact rather than profit. They are being driven by global online teams of mainly young volunteers, who either want to develop their skills, enhance their CV, or simply make change happen. With many making the most of the additional free time afforded by remote working and studying, and a heightened sense of urgency driven by the revealing of so many systemic challenges and injustices.

So while young people have been forced to adapt to change as a result of the pandemic; many are now seeking to create the change that emergencies like Covid should not be required to accelerate. Just as adapting is key in the new world we face as we (hopefully) see the end of the pandemic, it is even more important for us to use that skill - and our many others - to create the world we want to live in. Because then we will help determine and be ready for what we next have to adapt to.

GET INVOLVED

If you would like to use your skills to volunteer, you can join a project here.
If you are running or starting up a Social Enterprise or Non-governmental organisation dedicated to making a change, you can find the skilled volunteers you need to grow your impact for free here.
Contact us to find out how your employees can make a difference and create a lasting change in your organisation here.