Student-led St Gallen Symposium calls for a new inter-generational contract
The discussions uncovered dilemmas and new as well as more effective models of collective action to address common challenges
THE student-led annual St Gallen Symposium was back with a bang this year bringing 1,200 participants from 78 nations to Switzerland in May for a week of in-person meeting after a gap of two years.
“This year’s St Gallen Symposium was one of the first physical international conferences after two strenuous and isolating years,” says its Singapore-based chief representative for Asean, Fabian Karst.
“Allowing our participants to listen to the insights from speakers such as Ben van Beurden, Shell CEO; Grace Fu, Singapore's Minister for Sustainability and the Environment; and Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic, the 4th President of Croatia, while meeting these individuals on campus is something which cannot be done online,” he highlights.
“Engaging in spontaneous discussions with people from different generations and countries while having the Swiss mountains in sight makes the symposium uniquely special. Furthermore, the exceptional atmosphere created at the University of St Gallen with the help of more than 500 students is breath-taking and something that our participants dearly missed.”
Fu says that she was honoured to be invited to participate in this year’s St Gallen Symposium. “The focus of this year’s symposium, ‘Collaborative Advantage’, offers a good opportunity for inclusive dialogue and collective action given the backdrop of global uncertainties and challenges,” she tells BT.
“I was glad to see the symposium brought together leaders of today and tomorrow to discuss opportunities for collaboration. Participants of the symposium, young and old, came with an open and inquisitive attitude to hear and learn from both their peers and others of another age group. There was genuine interest to listen to each other’s viewpoints. I left Switzerland inspired and energised by the enthusiasm of the students and current leaders from various sectors.
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“I am optimistic that the symposium will contribute towards a new inter-generational compact which we can build on for a better and more sustainable future,” she adds.
This year’s symposium issued a call for a new inter-generational contract.
Giving the context for this call, Felix Ruediger, head of content and research, St Gallen Symposium, tells BT: “I think many of us would agree that divides and inequities between generations have been widening in recent years. Demographic change, the climate crisis and unprecedented public and private debt levels are only some of many pressing challenges, particularly to young and future generations.
“If we look at global surveys, we find that – compared to previous decades – more and more people now fear that today’s children will be worse off than their parents. With our joint initiative for ‘A New Generational Contract’ – together with the Club of Rome and other partners, the St. Gallen Symposium wants to ignite a global dialogue around the mutual rights and responsibilities of younger and older generations, and how we can foster greater inter-generational collaboration and fairness together,” he says.
Asked what will having an inter-generational contract mean, Ruediger says: “We have started a global process of consulting members of all generations on exactly this question. This was done through surveys, hundreds of student ideas submitted to our Global Essay Competition and cross-generational workshops at the 51st St Gallen Symposium this past May...
“Some key ideas stand out already: Decision making needs to involve more young people to ensure that we consider long-term consequences of current actions. Healthcare and pension systems, priorities in government spending, our educational curricula, as well as business strategies need to be significantly re-thought. What this will exactly entail depends of course on specific national contexts. In a next step, we’re gathering concrete and innovative ideas of how such ambitions can be put into action and seek to craft partnerships for their implementation.”
The thinking behind making the call for a new inter-generational contract is that there is the need to act now in order to re-think established institutions and put them on a more sustainable, future-oriented footing. As a platform for cross-generational dialogue with a history of more than 50 years, the St Gallen Symposium brings together more than 300 partner organisations from business, policy and civil society with a network of thousands of young leaders from around the world.
This is why it can make a unique contribution to foster a much-needed cross-generational dialogue and to ultimately realise the main goal of “A New Generational Contract”: promoting organisations and systems which allow for a fair sharing of resources and effective collaboration across generations, Ruediger tells BT.
The discussions in this year's symposium uncovered dilemmas and new as well as more effective models of collective action to address common challenges. With sustainability being a key area of the debate, many perspectives and solutions were discussed.
“Singapore's minister Grace Fu provided insights into the city-state's approach to coping with climate change. Furthermore, the way to deal with Russia's invasion of Ukraine was another common thread running through the debates. Here, the focus was on medium-term consequences for politics, the economy and society, Europe's energy security, the future of Nato and global food security,” Karst tells BT.
In a public session, Filipino journalist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Maria Ressa made an impassioned plea to the international audience to do more to protect press freedom. Furthermore, new formats allowed the participants to be matched with someone of the opposite opinion, making the Symposium more engaging and interactive than ever before, he adds.
There are many different groups of participants in the St Gallen Symposium, making it the unique event that it is.
About 400 business leaders worldwide join the event every year as they are convinced of the necessity of inter-generational and cross-cultural dialogue. In addition, more than 200 Leaders of Tomorrow, the most brilliant young minds of the next generation, attend the symposium every year.
“With all expenses covered, they either qualified via the Global Essay Competition, for which they wrote an outstanding essay, or got selected to be part of the Symposium’s Knowledge Pool, which gives exceptional entrepreneurs, researchers, and activists below 30 the opportunity to join the event.
However, that’s not all; with more than 400 students from the University of St Gallen contributing to the event by driving participants, assembling the venue and engaging in discussions, they make the St Gallen spirit truly special,” says Karst.
What is special about the St Gallen Symposium is that it is a student-led initiative, and is completely envisioned, organised, and run by students.
To make this possible, every year, 30 highly dedicated students from the University of St Gallen voluntarily pause their studies and invest a whole year in making this unique event possible.
These students do everything from meeting the symposium's benefactors to drafting the symposium's programme to setting up the venue.
However, as 30 students are not enough to run an international conference, in the weeks before the event, they are joined by 500 volunteer student supporters. These help them create the unique St Gallen Symposium experience for which people from all around the world come to attend.
To enable the students to go on this incredible journey, a small foundation with full-time staff exists, facilitating knowledge transfer and enabling the students to grow and excel in their tasks.
Farst tells BT that as a non-profit organisation, the St Gallen Symposium relies on donations from its benefactors to make the yearly conference possible and drive the initiative's efforts to engage in cross-generational dialogue throughout the year.
“These contributions allow the St Gallen Symposium to create a platform where diverse voices from all over the world can be heard, and new ideas and solutions are developed and discussed. The most significant expenses are the transport, food and programme for the 200 Leaders of Tomorrow who get invited to the event from all over the world,” he adds.
The Symposium’s work is now continued from one annual meeting to the next through a year-round initiative that drives its mission of cross-generational dialogue by talks, publications and discussions throughout the year.
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