Here’s the truth, we are not educating our youths to be leaders if we are not equipping them with the right questions and expectations of the corporate world. After all, they are the business owners, managers, employees etc. of the future. And no teacher or school can teach this in a classroom……….that is a fact.

It has to be real, it has to involve people who are out there doing it, it must include interactive mind blowing site visits etc. And there is nobody better to take on this challenge than the corporate world through their CSR programs.  And if your CSR program is not in some way impacting the MINDS of the future generation, I would say you need to reflect A LOT after reading this article.

If you ask the average young person what job they want in the future and where would they find those jobs, they typically have no clue that within an auction house there is a graphic artist or in a lawfirm there is an accountant or in a hotel there is an engineer or in a bank there is a corporate communication specialist etc.

We brought this all home this past week for two local UAE companies we partnered with under their CSR programs, Media One and National Bank of Abu Dhabi for fieldtrips to their place of business. Trust us when we tell you neither companies, who we do commend of their solid CSR track record, had in place an interactive CSR site visit for youth ages 9-13. So we thought we had our work cut out for us since under no conditions were we going to have a show and tell site visit. So we suggested ideas of ways to engage young folks and the companies were so receptive. They implemented our ideas immediately and in the end it turned out to be easier than we could have ever imagined. They both stepped up and wowed us all and shined………..literally.