On November 5, Columbia Global Centers | Istanbul hosted the Istanbul workshop for the “Youth in a Changing World” project, initiated by the Committee on Global Thought at Columbia University. The workshop was led by Dr. Vishakha Desai, Senior Advisor for Global Affairs to the President of Columbia University, Vice-Chair of the Committee on Global Thought, and Senior Research Scholar in Global Studies at the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University, with 16 Turkish youth.
The workshop was one of a series of workshops with youth around the world in collaboration with the Columbia Global Centers to identify commonalities and differences among youth around the world towards producing concrete proposals for both global and local approaches to meet ongoing challenges. How are youth around the world affecting and being affected by the rapidly changing world? How youth adapt to and contend with the changing world may provide important insights into our global future. Today’s youth generation is the largest, most educated, and most technically savvy generation to date. Yet, from unsettling changes in the geopolitical order to shifting configurations of family, community, and the nature of work, to growing awareness of planetary challenges such as climate change, the trajectory of youth seems more uncertain now than it did at the turn of the twentieth century. The question is what kind of world do we want to create for the future? And how are youth, the bearers of that future, both shaping and being shaped by the changing world?
