The young people should get to work now to create the world that they would like to live in, Nobel laureate Prof Muhammad Yunus has told the One Young World Summit in Ottawa.
He also called for creating a new civilisation because "this current greed based civilisation would not last much longer".
The Grameen Bank founder made the call while delivering a keynote address at the summit Wednesday at Parliament Hill, a Yunus Centre press release said yesterday.
Yunus's speech followed that of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan at the opening of the summit, which brings together 1,300 young leaders from more than 196 countries.
Prime Minister Trudeau earlier had a separate discussion with Prof Yunus on youth issues and later tweeted about his meeting with Prof Yunus stating, "Muhammad Yunus has dedicated his life to fighting poverty. @OneYoungWorld delegates are lucky to learn from him this week in Ottawa".
Prof Yunus urged the young delegates to not accept the world that is handed to them rather build the world of their own dreams. He said he dreamt of a world where there was zero poverty, zero unemployment and zero net carbon emissions. He said he saw three mega powers to achieve this -- the power of youth, the power of technology, and the power of social business.
The two other keynote speakers were former Irish president Mary Robinson and poverty activist and musician Bob Geldof.
The flag ceremony took place with one of the 10 young delegates accompanying Yunus to the summit as the flag bearer for Bangladesh.
The global forum brings together the young delegates between ages 18 and 30. During the three-day summit, young leaders from all around the world will present their work and interact and learn from the counsellors who are global leaders in different fields at the Shaw Centre in Canada's capital on global issues. This is the seventh One Young World Summit. Yunus has been a counsellor since the first summit.
Earlier in the day, under the auspices of the One Young World, a special forum on social business took place where Yunus delivered a master class on social business. During the six hour event, there were presentations and panels on social business from Bangladesh and from Canadian practitioners and universities that are getting involved in social business.
