The path of a child’s life is shaped by the experiences they have during their first FIVE years of life.
We want all children to have the type of early life experiences that help them realise their full potential in the world they are going to live in. While there are hundreds of life-influencing circumstances outside of our control, what if we could significantly impact a handful of them?
The Think Future conference aims to bring together a global mix of change makers. They will explore & co-create action around FIVE of the critical ingredients needed by today’s children to succeed in tomorrow’s world.
- Resilience – Preparing children to respond to uncertainty, novelty, change and adversity
- Aptitude – Building powerful brains that are ready and able to learn in a digital age
- Empathy – Ensuring that children are able to see the world from someone else’s viewpoint
- Imagination – Stimulating the spirit of imagination in children to unlock their creativity
- Ingenuity – Sparking the ability to problem-solve and innovate right from the beginning
If we want all children of this generation to have the opportunity to thrive in the future, we cannot keep doing what we’re doing. We need inventive ideas and radical change to happen quickly at scale. This need is most pronounced for children living in poverty, where circumstances are such that young brains are wired to survive and not to thrive.
Laying the right foundation right from the start represents a life-transforming opportunity for a child and an equality-promoting investment for society as a whole.
Key Content
Participants will be exposed, through a series of exciting talks, to FIVE of the forces currently driving massive shifts in our world. They will look to these disruptors to inform and inspire the design of new ideas and transformative approaches to building resilience; aptitude; empathy; imagination and ingenuity in young children, especially those living in conditions of poverty and hardship.
The talks will be led by thought-leaders who are (most likely) not currently involved in the early childhood care and education space.
The FIVE Global Disruptors
- Social movements
- The sharing economy
- Accelerating technology
- Decentralisation
- Environmental consciousness
Reality Check
These talks will be followed by a series of ‘connecting-the-dots’ sessions, each led by an early childhood care & education (ECCE) expert. These ECCE ‘connectors’ will help make the links between the first set of talks and the current challenges experienced in preparing today’s children to succeed in tomorrow’s world. They will provide an opportunity to explore assumptions and stereotypes that may be limiting the ability to innovate.
Time to Create
A series of parallel sessions will provide opportunities for participants to:
- Produce & Pivot: Turn emerging ideas into actions/co-create new ideas/pivot existing activities in new ways
- Pitch & Partner: Connect with people and find partners for scale
- Ponder & Play: Take a break and feed their inner-child in an interactive play space
Our experience at Innovation Edge is that the meeting of unlike minds is effective in sparking innovation and enabling individuals to think differently about their everyday reality.
Who should attend?
Entrepreneurs, inventors, innovators, thought-leaders, early childhood development service providers, communicators, media, tech companies, incubators, accelerators, financial institutions, big businesses, small businesses, educators, health professionals, scientists, teachers, students…
Anyone who wants to be part of ensuring that today’s babies are equipped to become tomorrow’s leaders.
The cost for the fully inclusive pass is R10 500.00 per person. This fee includes all conference activities, meals and accommodation for 3 nights.
The cost for the 2.5 day pass, which excludes accommodation is R6 500.00 per person.