Duncan Armstrong will be in town next Thursday night. I said this to one colleague and was greeted with Duncan who. I added, the Olympic gold medalist, born in Rockhampton; that didn’t help him recall the name either. To keep the conversation going my colleague asked, what was he coming to Rocky for. I said the inaugural Young Change Agents Regional Pitch event. I got a similar visual response, with a ‘what’.
Wouldn’t it be great if our city better recognised its champions and was better engaged with what our youth, the future of our region, are passionate about in wanting to change/solve in our community!
‘Come along to hear our new Youth Change Agents pitch their social enterprise solutions to problems they have identified and are passionate about’. That is the catch cry to attend the Inaugural Young Change Agents (YCA) Regional Pitch Rockhampton event next Thursday night at the CQUniversity.
Recently teams of students from both local primary and secondary schools have been given the mission to identify a problem in our community and devise a way to solve it. Why? To encourage more of our youth to think and act as entrepreneurs. Become job creators instead of job searchers. And not necessarily after they finish their schooling, as some local high school students are already doing.
Next Thursday night 6 teams present their ideas to a public forum and judging panel. These are teams who want to go to the next level, not deterred by fellow student or parent peer pressure that say it’s a silly idea, won’t work or leave that to others to solve. These students feel they can make a difference.
This is what we need to foster. Youth believing they can make a positive difference in their communities and enabling them to do so. It is more than whether their idea does solve a problem, it’s the process they go through to think and act as entrepreneurs. Enhancing belief in themselves that they can be creators. As I quoted Bruce Nussbaum last week, “creativity is the source of economic value, creativity transforms what money can’t buy into what money can buy”.
The following night (next Friday) another under reported but important event starts in Rockhampton, GovHack. At GovHack teams access open source government data and think of other ways it can be reutilised to solve problems and create economic value. Not just for geeks, as the name may suggest, GovHack is for anyone interested in developing and presenting an entrepreneurial idea over 2.5 days.
The more our community is informed and engages with these entrepreneurial programs the more of our most innovative and talented youth we retain, as opposed to them (and their parents) believing they need to leave to fulfill their potential.
Duncan Armstrong OAM, is guest presenter at the Inaugural Young Change Agents Regional Pitch event representing Telstra, a YCA national sponsor, but also as a young kid who had a mission that he set out to achieve. Born in Rockhampton, where he proclaimed his goal was to win Olympic gold, left as a teenager to realise his potential and as an underdog (world ranking 46th) achieved his goal in the 200metre freestyle Olympic final.
Wouldn’t it be awesome that Rockhampton continued to raise champions, in many fields, but they didn’t have to leave to fulfill their potential?
Inaugural Young Change Agents (YCA) Regional Pitch Rockhampton event is on at the CQUniversity 6pm Thursday September 6. To register your attendance visit: https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/young-change-agents-regional-pitch-rockhampton-tickets-48575110463.
GovHack is at the Smart Hub Rockhampton Friday September 7 to 9. Contact the SmartHub on 49368444. Both events are free to attend.