The Youth of Today Is the Future of tomorrow

No matter how hard the generations of yesterday tried to rid the world of poverty, hunger, water scarcity, lack of healthcare and plethora of other problems, the fact is many of the challenges still remain active and the responsibility to solve them now lies before the youth of today.

YSI, a Norwegian startup founded in 2016 by then 17- year-old Maiuran Loganathan empowers young people around the world to participate in achieving UN Sustainable Development Goals by creating and leading sustainable startups.

More Than Just an Online Education

YSI provides online education for groups of young people in innovation, creativity, and leadership by using the online learning platform NovoEd. It is also using Facebook to connect, match and mentor youth from around the world. The Facebook group known as Earthpreneurs has almost 8000 members.

In addition to online training, YSI is engaging with partner companies for the purpose of knowledge exchange and is facilitating generation of ideas and strategic development through workshops with companies. YSI executive partners are Norwegian chemical company Yara, City of Oslo, and sustainable furniture manufacturer Vestre.

From YSI Conference to On-Site Installation

Startups hailing from YSI’s 5 module, 5-month program are already making some headway into solving real-world problems. One of them is Aquasolis Global, a high technology startup co-founded by Nitesh Shail, a participant at 2016 YSI  20 under 20 conferences in Oslo.

The company developed membrane filtration technology that saves more water with lower operational costs. With almost zero liquid discharge desalination and 30%, less energy consumption the product should make water purification plants more sustainable and provide cheap water in a world where water scarcity affects more than 40 percent of the global population.

Intended for use by aid organisation and communities in Africa, the first unit is currently installed in Tanzania. The startup shares UN Sustainable and development goal 6 – clean water and sanitation.

1.2 Billion Young People That Can Make a Positive Change

Seedstars, World Merit, and Global Shapers are incubators, social enterprises and initiatives dealing with social issues, emerging market startups and networks of young people and can be considered as competitors. However, according to UN Sustainable Development Goal 17 – partnerships for the goals, there is a need for stronger commitment to partnership and cooperation for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. So, in the spirit of this goal, these organisations can be considered as partners.

The share of the 15-24 age group in the global population is 16.16%  which is almost 1.2 billion young people eligible to apply for participation in the YSI innovation program.

Expansion to new countries is underway with innovation programs on all continents coming next. According to the company, they will also develop an innovation program for corporations and founders and are considering the development of their own online learning platform.

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Valuer.ai is a partner of Nordic Startup Awards and has decided to create these decks about nominees. Valuer.ai is a matchmaking platform between startups and corporations and operates from its HQ in Copenhagen, Denmark.