The 2025 Innovate4Climate conference, taking place from June 10-12 in Sevilla, Spain, will play host to a brand-new edition of Connect4Climate’s Youth4Innovation initiative, whose pilot session galvanized vital discussion around creative solutions in the context of last year’s G7 in Italy.
Youth4Innovation fosters intergenerational collaboration to reimagine the future of jobs, convening youth, academia, and the private sector to co-create innovative models, opportunities, and solutions for a livable planet.
With an unprecedented 1.2 billion young people in the Global South projected to enter working age in the coming decade, the need to connect passionate young innovators with employment opportunities that will enable them to reach their full potential and thrive is crystal clear. Recent research speaks to the power of intergenerational leadership to transform tried-and-true approaches for a new era, foster fruitful creative exchanges, enhance private-sector ambition, and, by nurturing an atmosphere of innovation, pave the way to sustainable, long-term economic success. Youth4Innovation opens the door to just this sort of collaboration by bringing together members of this imaginative generation and private-sector companies eager to transform their businesses into engines of sustainability.
Youth4Innovation participants in Torino tackle a design thinking exercise together.
Credit: Alvaro Prieto, Connect4Climate
Building on cutting-edge research, design thinking strategies from academia, and the World Bank Group’s wealth of knowledge, the Youth4Innovation initiative helps established and rising leaders develop transformational ideas together – new ways of producing energy, new ways of building cities, new ways of growing food – and drives intergenerational, intercultural, and intersectoral innovation in the process.
Over the course of a day-long design thinking workshop on June 11, participants from diverse backgrounds – including twelve alumni of the Max Thabiso Edkins Climate Ambassador Program – will work together in Sevilla to develop bold new approaches and co-create intergenerational solutions within three outcome areas that link to the World Bank Group Scorecard: More and Better Jobs, Resilient Communities, and More Private Investment.
On the day of the workshop, diverse working groups will tackle specific challenges within the focus areas of Jobs, Resilience, and Investment, employing design thinking methodologies to define these challenges, ideate solutions, and co-create implementation pathways to bring those solutions into the real world. Participants will be able to take the outputs of the day back to their communities, companies, and organizations – emerging with valuable new connections to help them scale up solutions and foster intergenerational collaboration.
We encourage you to stay tuned to our @Connect4Climate social media channels (Instagram, X, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Facebook) for coverage of the June 11 Youth4Innovation workshop and other Innovate4Climate updates.
Banner image courtesy of Alpsem, Pixabay.
