World+Challenges,+The+Next+25+Years

=World Challenges: The Next 25 Years =

In the next 25 years, the world’s citizens are going to have some major issues on their hands. Places like Beijing and Hawaii already have large homeless populations and cities like Raleigh, that are in swiftly growing urban areas, will have likewise have growing homeless populations. Mass migratory populations are already becoming more common as people search for work in an ever more global market. Large influxes of people into these cities will undoubtedly help to increase the homeless and impoverished populations. Pskov, a city that already has very cold winters, will most likely see some extreme climate change with the possibility of having winters colder or longer than they already have and summers getting hotter. Similarly, Sakayra, which normally has moderate weather year-round due to its location next to the Black Sea, will probably start to see changes in the local weather that will, in turn, change the ecosystems that affect their fishing economy and their lifestyles.

In order to cope with and manage these global trends, individuals are going to have to become world citizens who understand that all of these issues are not separate events, but one large interconnected system of change that is happening to the world as a whole. By learning to act in our own hometowns in ways that are globally responsible and reaching out to communities across the globe to solve common problems together, we can brainstorm to find new and innovative ways to address these issues that affect us all. This kind of collaboration will require that individuals be open to the ideas, cultures and opinions of others; be creative and have problem-solving skills; and be able to communicate across borders.

For individuals to be more open to ideas, cultures and opinions other than their own, each of us has to commit to wanting to learn and understand more about others. It will take a personal commitment from both individuals and from community leaders to support the stance of openness to others. Community leaders, parents and teachers can also help their children to start learning problem-solving skills early and support the creativity that blossoms in young minds. These skills will help younger generations to be able to think outside the box and find new innovations to help solve world problems. Lastly, individuals must have both the ability and the resources to communicate across borders. By this I mean, they must have the language skills (ability) to be able to communicate with others that speak different languages and have different cultural understandings as well as the access to technology (resources) that allow them to communicate across those borders. The second is obviously much easier to come by. With internet access and telephones, people speak across the world every day. Cross-border communication is becoming more and more prevalent. The skill to speak and understand other languages and cultures, however, is growing less rapidly. Students in many countries are required to learn a second language from a young age, but this requirement is far from universal in education around the globe. Only by increasing the number and relevance of the languages that we teach in schools will we start to see multilingual skills become common.

It is with these skills and methods that we will be able to competently and confidently move into the next 25 years of world challenges. It is only with the commitment to the others in the world around us that we can make so bold and proactive a movement toward solving our global issues.