SHILLONG, Oct 6: Aibankitlang Allya, a local youth presently studying in the University of Birmingham, is one among four students to pass the first round of the PricewaterhouseCoopers and Universitas 21 Innovation Challenge, 2021 competition being held in three stages beginning with the university level preliminary round.
The PwC & U21 Innovation Challenge, 2021 had invited graduate students from 27 premier universities across six continents to submit a three-minute video to suggest initiatives that could be undertaken by governments and/or businesses and/or education providers to help improve and maintain shared and sustainable prosperity. Participants were asked to address how to narrow the widening skills gap. The solution was to develop a worldwide Upskilling programme for low-to-medium skilled workers and the future workforce, which could potentially increase the global GDP by USD 6.5 trillion by 2030.
The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the global economy and further exposed the inadequacies of the current economic structures, highlighting a growing mismatch between people’s current skills and the needs of the workplace. The above challenge seeks to address these critical issues.
This global challenge was held amidst the pandemic but still had a very vibrant group of participants.
Speaking to The Shillong Times Aibankitlang said, “The competition was nothing like I’ve experienced before, and it pushed me to think beyond the comfort of academic learning. The challenge gave me a valuable perspective that this generation has the chance and the resources to ensure that no one misses the fourth industrial revolution because it is a ticket for every worker to a piece of the pie.”
Aibankitlang informed that the competition is now over and the final round took into consideration – people’s votes and judges’ marks, as determined by a panel from PwC. “I’m one of three winners and I got the highest number of votes in comparison to the other two winners. I was notified of the vote count but we have no idea who got the better marks from the judges. Therefore, there’s no 1st, 2nd or 3rd and we’re all sharing the same spotlight,” he said.
