WikiStage Community Changemakers
My name is Hamdi Salem, I am a student graduate in Financial Sciences, following mathematical and economic studies, always passionate about Financial Markets. At first, I started with the Stock Markets, but then focused entirely on the Cryptocurrency Market, thanks to which I had my first experiences in the field of FinTech, particularly in Blockchain. I have also joined the startup movement, to start my own company. At the beginning I was just a simple entrepreneur, activist of human rights, contributor to this emerging ecosystem (the Algerian entrepreneurial ecosystem). I was organizing event competitions, camps, and workshops where I was sharing my skills with others.
WikiStage event is one of the richest experience you can gain - sharing knowledge, moments of joy or positive stress, teamwork… it’s a real adventure! Organiser’s main goal is to succeed in the challenge. It is an opportunity to develop new skills, to learn through acting, to manage a project, to work and collaborate as a team, to discover and experiment with the new horizons. It is also about building yourself; personally and professionally. In short: it's about getting out of your comfort zone and expanding it. We organized one of the biggest national events in Algeria, the first Colloque WikiStage Tizi-Ouzou in 2019, which took place over two days with more than 1,600 young people joining us at the Kateb Yacine Regional Theater. The big challenge was to launch our activities during the beginning of the popular peaceful movement for the change of the system of governance in Algeria, also called the smiling revolution or the Hirak.
My team gathered 30 multidisciplinary young people, all students at Mouloud Mammeri University of Tizi Ouzou campuses whose Project Manager was Céline Hammou. I occasionally thank the rest of the team for giving their best for the success of this event. The theme we had chosen for our WikiStage was “Build your way to success“. We knew that in order to have a successful career, we must not only acquire skills, but also receive the necessary support and guidance to apply them in the real world. This form of event is the best way to boost youth, by bringing their idols on the stage - speakers who have experience in different fields, and who have managed to bring positive change themselves. WikiStgae is helping to share the fears of our young generation and to find solutions together. It's all about sharing the secrets of successful careers, but also failures that came before them. Yu can find these speeches in the form of 12-minute stand-up talks filmed and recorded on a video library with open access and free of charge on the official website: www.wikistage.org. It is also a global networking opportunity as the participants in the event are coming from all over the world.
Among the Third World countries, Algeria is arguably the largest country in the MENA region, rich in natural resources and well known for its bad economy situation, but not for long. Algeria is now adopting a new strategy to focus on investing in the progress of youth by promoting startups in order to stimulate economic growth. This came as a result of youth activism. Students from different scientific student’s clubs, associations, NGOs, etc. were organizing awareness-raising events such as national conferences, scientific events, Startup Weekends, Hackathons, and especially WikiStage in almost all the cities of Algeria around different topics. These events have been very successful and have inspired other forms of events, especially about entrepreneurship. These events had a lot of influence on the development of the following government strategies and empowering young people to take the lead, to anticipate change but also to create it if necessary.
As a Young Change Maker, Algeria Youth Ambassadors member, I want to contribute to a youth who creates their own models, today, especially as our generation is confronted with a huge panel of problems, on a local, national and global scale. (International pandemic, environmental crisis, poverty, access to health care, education, etc.). I start from the premise that the real solutions will not come from large international companies or governments; rather, it's the young people who build them. I am convinced that we have all the cards in hand to provide real innovative solutions. Young social entrepreneurs are proof of this. Our generation has both the motivation and the sensitivity to do this. Each of them should participate in building the world of tomorrow by encouraging as many young people as possible to become changemakers, young people who, in their respective fields, are bringing about change and impacting their environments, whatever the scale of that change is.
With the Coronavirus pandemic, all public gatherings are suspended; it is our duty as a community to adapt to the health situation, and to be able to exist outside the walls in a virtual way and to adapt events to this context where information and communication technology is increasingly developing. We must remain active especially in these most difficult moments, to mobilize and bring comfort and moral support to others.
