Muhammad Siyab Panhwar, student at the Weill Cornell Medical College–Qatar, sharing his experience at the first session of the second annual TEDxYouth@Doha held yesterday at the Virginia Commonwealth University- Qatar atrium.
By Fazeena Saleem
DOHA: TEDxYouth@Doha, an independently organised TED conference, hosted around 500 young people who wanted to listen to talks on this year’s theme – #failbetter, at the VCUQatar atrium yesterday at its second annual event.
The event discussed ‘failure’, an unusual topic to be discussed at a public forum. Over 20 young people spoke about their experiences on the theme in three sessions, OMG-Observe, BRB-Experience and ME-Overcome.
Yaseer Masood, Founder and Curator of TEDxYouth@Doha, bringing in #failbetter as the theme believes that ‘failure’ is a misunderstood concept and it is a word that tends to hold back teenagers from pursuing their dreams and TEDxYouth@Doha tries to dispel the notion that failure should be feared.
Uzair Mohammad, Chief Curator, commenting about the speakers said: “Some had their topics and presentations running through their minds for weeks, and others were confirmed just 10 days before the event. Regardless of which category they fell in, each speaker had to work hard at being true to themselves and their message on stage.”
More than 100 countries are holding TEDxYouthDay events during the weekend and over 42 countries are celebrating World Children’s Day. TEDxYouth@Doha is also held annually to in November to commemorate United Nations Universal Children’s Day. Young people aged between 15 years and 18 years are selected as speakers in the event.
Majority of the speakers were from high schools and universities, Bilal Renderee, the Al Jazeera reporter who spoke of his own journey was an exception.
“We eventually decided on the title ‘A series of (un)fortunate events,’ with the brackets being used to indicate that you never really know if an experience will be negative or positive until you see all the repercussions from it,” Renderee explained.
“The theme of #failbetter runs through my whole talk. Every step of the way, things happened that could have led to major failures, but ultimately things turned out very differently.
“When I saw the theme of this year’s event I wanted to take part because, while I’ll admit I am not a youth anymore, I think that if I had been exposed to something like this when I was younger, it would have helped me a lot,” he said.
A live stream of the event was broadcast on the web.
This year, TEDxYouth@Doha was joined by Qatar Foundation as a Knowledge Partner, by Maersk Oil as a Principal Sponsor, and Doha Bank as a Support Sponsor.
The Peninsula
