Post-WEF 2010: The Davos Train

Do you know when you catch a train wishing to go to one place and you end up in a totally different place?

That’s what happened with me back at the World Economic Forum 2010. I intensely prepared myself, trying to conciliate all the exams and the daily break-dance trainings with the one I felt as the greatest responsibility I have ever had, of representing the Global Changemakers community and world youth.

Yet, the driver of this train curiously did not recognize the same train stops as I did and unexpectedly stopped the train: suddenly I realized that I did not have enough time to do everything and so I missed my break-dance trainings in order to prepare well enough to Davos and the University challenges.

I caught the train again and I kept going on. On January 22nd the train arrived in Switzerland, not immediately at Davos as I was expecting, but in a very small village called Ardez…

I remember when we left the train, seeing it driving away from our reach, and we looked around:

A quiet, snowy, frozen and beautiful village was beyond us.

We felt like being in a white and snowy variation of the Old West movies. No cowboys, just Changemakers. No shooting each other, just pure positive social movement… and strong preparation for the World Economic Forum!

The first thing we made was showing the work we had already done and the presentations we were planning to do at the Ideaslab – 3rd unexpected train stop: our ideas were good, but there were a lot of things to improve in our power-points and presentation skills. And I do mean a lot – the following days which supposedly would be 70% work and 30% relaxing, were more the kind of 95% work and 5% relaxing.

We were preparing for Davos in the morning, afternoon and evening, during lunch and dinner, and having some breaks during the day to have a walk in Ardez, and having intense snowball fights, see the landscape, eat Swiss Chocolat, and go online.

At the end of the four days spent there we kinda liked the Old Snowy West Ardez, but the train wouldn’t wait for us, we got in and went on the Road to Davos…

Davos was an expected train stop of this train, the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2010 was in itself a sequence of unexpected train stops:

You meet people there randomly: You see Muhammad Yunus at the corner and you go talk to him, you see Bill Gates passing with literally tens of persons after him and you join the crowd driving Mousa in the wheelchair, surpassing everyone, intercepting him, and start talking to him.

You have to think and act quickly: only the first raising their arms can make a question or get a point across, you have to answer questions yourself, giving your contributions in debates and sessions and prepare your speeches while you’re talking and collecting points from everyone at your table.

But the most unexpected stop this train had at WEF was when Professor Klaus Schwab gave us a set of questions for us to prepare our answers to the closing session and, in the end, asked us things totally and completely different live on TV and in front of all the audience… That was unexpected.

Ironically or not, things worked well in the end. And I feel that this just happened because we had learned the most important lesson the British Council and all the World Economic Forum could ever taught to us: to expect the unexpected, and be ready for it.

Finally, I am sure you already guess that this train I have been talking about it is not a regular train…
You get in not knowing very well were you’re going and through this train you end up visiting the most amazing places, discovering the most inspiring people and learning & having fun in a lot of good and harsh moments too.

And, if the first thing I learned with this train was to expect the unexpected, and be ready for it, the second was to not to travel alone, and to make this journey always together with the people you admire, respect and love most.

Fran, John, Paola, Matt, Gabby, Kath, Mousa, Tshepiso, Carmina, Nishin, Sarah, Alanda, Ellie, Elsabe, Helen, Ibrahim, Jason, Mohammed, Scott, Zuhal, Aashish, Abdullah, Alhalji, Ali, Alice, Alisa, Amanda, Amnah, Anar, Aram, Ashini, Blendrit, Daniel, David, Davis, Deepika, Deepshikha, Dinar, Eugene, Ghalia, Gilmore, Illya, Italo, Jack, Kamil, Kanit, Lihini, Linh Do, Lisa, Christy, Meicy, María Ines, Maria Jesus, Mariel, Maru, Marina, Michael, Monica, Nasma, Rachel, Sam, Sanjana, Serena, Shariqa, Sofía, Stefan, Stéphanie, Thireindar, Uyen, Viktor, Wonga, Yadana, Ashlee, Zain, Zain Mousawy and all the Global Changemakers out there, I am glad I am sharing this train with you – lets built a jet plane and make a faster, better and lasting positive social change!

A sustainable, bio, carbon free and fair trade hug to everyone,
João