The 8th edition of the United Nations-supported Public Benefit International Challenge for Youth (PBIC) ended last Sunday in Beijing after more than two months, with teenagers in China developing innovative ideas to solve social problems in Africa.
Promoting clean drinking water, gender equality and reducing marine pollution are just three of the twelve innovative solutions for this year’s PBIC.
The Public Benefit International Challenge for Youth, jointly organized by the United Nations Population Fund and the China-Africa Business Council, aims to strengthen ties with Africa by challenging teenagers in China to develop innovative solutions for a better Africa.
“It is a good opportunity to build strong ties between China and Africa. It also allows people to learn about different cultures and other information from different perspectives,” said Chu Weiran, a PBIC participant.
To help Chinese youth better understand Africa, each team is assigned an African student studying in China who acts as a mentor.
“We are all united to build something great together. These kids really have a passion for Africa, to build something great there,” says Oyama Devlin Zion, a mentor at PBIC.
“On this side of the world, far away from Africa, we are having conversations to create change in Africa, to empower women and men in Africa, and to improve lives in Africa as a whole. This already shows our willingness to build deeper and stronger relationships,” said Divine Lisala, CEO of Deluxe World.
In addition to promoting intensive exchange and closer ties, what is particularly impressive is the practical applicability and creativity expressed in the projects of the young participants.
Huang Zhongyang, co-founder of PBIC, said that since the program was launched in 2017, many innovations proposed by Chinese students have been gradually implemented in Africa.
“Last year, we launched a program called Blossomy Africa, which provides women in disadvantaged areas of Africa with access to STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) courses. I believe that competitions like PBIC help young people in China and Africa to become more connected to the world,” he said.
“All of the teams are just amazing. What impressed me most is the creativity of these young people and how hard they worked to develop their projects,” said Matthew Traxler, a PBIC judge who is a professor of psychology and graduate advisor at UC Davis.
“When you bring groups of young people from foreign countries and foreign cultures together, they don’t look for problems or start fights right from the start. Rather, they try to build friendships, and I think events like this, and PBIC in particular, can help with interpersonal exchange,” says David Ferguson, a PBIC judge and volunteer editor-in-chief of English at Foreign Language Press.
The PBIC teams also shared their aspirations to expand the competition to a wider range of countries and to explore the possibility of organizing a competition within Africa.
The PBIC competition exemplifies the intensity of exchanges between China and Africa and shows the potential for cooperation and innovation among young people.
This spirit of partnership will no doubt be a central theme at the upcoming Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) summit in Beijing, where leaders will meet from September 4 to 6 to chart a course for even stronger China-Africa relations.
PBIC competition challenges young people to develop innovative solutions for a better Africa
More than 75,000 people have been displaced in the southwestern Gaza Strip in the last few days alone, a United Nations agency said on Sunday.
On Saturday evening, the Israeli military issued additional evacuation orders, forcing residents of parts of downtown Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip to move to designated “humanitarian zones.”
Philippe Lazzarini, Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), wrote on X that the displaced Palestinians “are arriving in overcrowded places where the shelters are already overcrowded with families.”
“Unlike other wars,” he wrote, “people in Gaza are trapped and don’t know where to go.”
The Al-Quds Brigades, the armed wing of the Islamic Jihad movement, said on Sunday that they had attacked Israeli soldiers and vehicles in Khan Younis with mortar shells and bombed the Israeli command center in the northeastern part of the city.
The armed group also released footage showing rockets being used to attack the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon and Israeli military positions in the Gaza Strip.
On Sunday, the Palestinian news and information agency WAFA reported that the Israeli army carried out air strikes on several areas of the enclave, including the Nuseirat and Bureij refugee camps in central Gaza and Khan Younis.
The Gaza government media office said on Sunday that data showed that the Israeli military operation in the Gaza Strip had destroyed over a hundred schools and killed over 100 university professors and academics and over 500 primary and secondary school teachers throughout the besieged enclave.
There has been no reaction to the claim from the Israeli side so far.
UN agency: More than 75,000 people have been displaced in southwest Gaza in recent days
