Nobel laureate Prof Muhammad Yunus yesterday urged the students around the globe to work for changing the world for the better, instead of remaining too much busy with textbooks.
"Do what you feel, go for it, change the world. Don’t be absorbed in the textbooks," he said in his keynote speech at the three-day ‘Education Without Borders’ conference in Abu Dhabi.
Higher College of Technology (HCT) organised the conference for exchange of ideas among students from around the globe as to how to build a more prosperous new world.
Students from more than 100 countries joined the meet.
Prof Yunus urged the students to work hard for the future that they want to see, saying that the young men are the creators of the world.
Narrating his dreams of making the world free from poverty, he forecast that someday in the future the world would be free from poverty. "Poverty will remain just only in the museum."
"The time is not so far away, it will come very soon," the micro-credit guru said blaming the institutions and policies for the poverty around the world.
"Poverty is created by the world around us. We have to redesign the world as poverty is artificially imposed on human beings," he told the conference.
The Nobel peace prize winner compared the predicament of the poor with Bansai tree, as these people could not get chance to use their immense power to work and their creativity just for policies. "They don’t get the chance and opportunity for growth as per their capacity."
Nobel laureates Dr Rita Levi-Montalcini and Prof J Georg Bednorz, UAE Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research, and HCT Chancellor Nahayan Mabarak Al Nahayan and Oman Minister of Commerce and Industry Maqbool Bin Ali Sultan also spoke, among others.
‘Education Without Borders’ is a biennial student conference creating networks across cultures in order to understand, and generate solutions for some of the world’s greatest challenges.
This is achieved by engaging the world’s most innovative students and leaders of business, technology, education, and the humanitarian sector in a collaborative forum that culminates with commitment to action.
In April 2001, the vision of a group of college students from Abu Dhabi, UAE, came to life as delegates from around the world arrived for the inaugural Education Without Borders, International Student Conference.
Source: http://www.thedailystar.net/2007/02/26/d70226060172.htm