Global Changemakers

As the last (but definitely not the least) of our post-WEF blog entries by this year’s Davos 6, here’s Sarah Jameel’s entry – or rather, the first installment of her entry. As befits a journey as packed as this one, Sarah’s travelogue is epic, but worth every byte. (Tune in for the second installment on Wednesday, 10 March!)

The perfect day is going to bed with a Dream and waking up with a Purpose. This was my definition of the most exhilarating and intense 5x24hours of my life: Davos 2010. Sometimes expectations far exceed interpretations, and thus journeying through the Alps in minus temperatures with five of the most amazingly different individuals and a Team that never sleeps, I encountered many mountains that were ably surpassed in the drive up to Davos. From the mimicking efforts of some players as nasty journalists in the little town of Ardez where the Davos 6 prepared for this skiing adventure, to sitting up till one am nibbling Swiss Chocolate whilst scripting our famous Ideaslab Presentations, we were brought down to ground level where practice was indeed catalyzed to original perfection by John Martin. Thus taking with us the training gear of hybridized pitches and introductions of ourselves and activism, we arrived at Davos with the cumulative message of the 60 Global Changemakers we were representing and the battalion of the collective 600 that stood behind us.

Sometimes you need to touch a hot dish once in a while to feel the heat and the reflex action you generate to take your hand away. Thus on the day before the Forum began the Davos 6 took a walk down a road that imprinted in them their cause to stand out as agents of Change in the days to come. This was the emotionally grueling experience of being a refugee at the hands of reality at the UNHCR’s Refugee Run. It was this hot dish that then helped us acclimatize realistically to the luxurious world at the Forum.

And so the hectic schedule for the 6 youngest participants of the WEF began…

As we began to put our skies on to maneuver the greatest slope of our lives, we arrived at the first base station – a private meeting with Professor Schwab! I think we could have generated a marginal profit if we had networked with some of the Green CEOs to export those butterflies from the stomachs as we walked into the office of undoubtedly one of the most subtle and influential people in the World. But as we succumbed to the treatment of Sparkling Water and sat down in conversation with this human, all invisible barriers shattered and within minutes we moved from discussing our activism, to Joao racing Professor Schwab at 50m freestyle. This was our first taste of the expression we patented at Davos; MIPing which stands for Meeting Important People.

– Sarah Jameel