Mawlana Hazar Imam often emphasizes the importance of educating our youth in order to ensure that young leaders of our community approach the future well-informed and with an open mind. Our community strives to do this by ensuring that youth are constantly engaged in activities and events that encourage the broadening of their perspectives. The unusual circumstances upon us today have not prevented our young minds from wanting to flourish and expand their knowledge. This was demonstrated during the recent e-Compete event held by the Ismaili Youth Coordinating Forum (UAE).
e-Compete encouraged our youth to learn and expand their knowledge through a variety of competitive games. The virtual experience instilled values of knowledge and wisdom in the young minds of our community. The event strived to help our youth understand the significance of team-building, which will subsequently help them in their academic, professional and personal lives. e-Compete empowered our youth to speak and present before audiences, helping participants to build their self-esteem. Another objective of this virtual event was to encourage participants to constructively use their time to acquire new information, by reading newspapers, books, and online resources. Faisal Asani, Content Lead for e-Compete, expressed how their ambition was to “connect our youth with other members of the community from around the world for some healthy competition.” He further went on to describe how “one of [their] primary objectives was to ignite curiosity in our youth by providing materials for them to discover and to continue looking into those topics even after the competition.”
Another important objective of this event was to encourage our youth to work together and cooperate to achieve their goals. During one of the rounds, participants had a limited amount of time to work together to answer a series of questions. When these participants were up against the clock, the true significance of joint action was brought to light as they strived to encourage and support each other. Participants represented a number of countries, including the Democratic Republic of Congo, Bangladesh, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi, the United States, Pakistan and the GCC countries. There were several volunteers from around the world who inspired as well as learned from each other, helping to organise and manage the online event. Simin Aslam, Project Lead for e-Compete, described the programme as “a great platform for youth and volunteers to work in collaboration with one another, regardless of their age, gender, region or background.”
Mawlana Hazar Imam, at the 1964 First World Socio-Economic Conference address (Karachi, Pakistan), said “whereas a few hundred years ago man suspected and imagined that the universe was, for all intents and purposes, limitless, today he knows this to be true. His improved understanding of the material world around him has given him the means to make sure that his original conception of the universe was correct, in that every day its limits are being pushed aside and new horizons appear.” Events like e-Compete have helped our youth to do just this - improve their understanding of the limitless world around us. Let us all ensure we are expanding our horizons, keeping ourselves informed of our surroundings, and encouraging those around us to do the same.
